Pils And A Bitter

[Green Iguana]

It's been a while since I brewed, life has been distracting. After jumping on this site for 10 minutes the other day, I immediately became stoked about brewing once more. This is truely a cool site. Here are two brews put together from leftovers in the garage.....

Pilsner
3.75kg JW pilsner
1kg JW munich
0.25kg cara-pils

30 tettnanger (5%) @ 60mins
15 tettnanger @ 15mins
15 tettnanger @ 1mins

1ltr starter WLP800 Pilsner

Bitter
3.75kg JW pilsner
1kg JW munich
0.15kg crystal (EBC80)

30 Goldings (5.5%) @ 60mins
15 Goldings @ 15mins
15 Goldings @ 1mins

1ltr starter Whitelabs 'Essex ale'

What is a good way to pitch for the pilsner, cool or hot? Pitching above ferment temps has been a problem before, it took off then seemed to stop once in the fridge.....


Cheers

 

[Gough]

G'day Green Iguana,

Your Pilsner recipe looks nice and malty. I can't get White Labs yeast locally here in Newcastle so use Wyeast and haven't used the WLP800, but assuming your yeast wants to sit between 8 and 12 then try cooling your wort to temp in your fridge before pitching. So long as your sanitation is good it works really well in my experience. Pint of Lager posted an excellent run down of this method recently which is worth a search. I've been using basically a similar but simpler version of her system myself recently with much better results for my lagers. Big starter, chilled to temp, pitch the slurry and pitch to cooled wort.

A bit more stuffing about but worth it IMO. Better and smoother lager flavours than when I used to pitch warm and try to drop the temp. Check out POL's post, it gives much more detail and some other tips as well.

Good luck,

Shawn.

 

[bradmcm]

Generally, for non-commercial batches, it is
more advantageous to pitch at room temperature and wait
some hours before cooling it down.
You want your cell count high as quickly as possible.
Of course, if you catch it too late, you may get some esters forming.

 

[Ross]

What does including 1 kg of munich malt, add to the teste profile of a bitter? :chug:

 

[warrenlw63]

I still think that pitching warm into a lager is rather like running after a train and hoping that you'll catch it.

Bringing down the fridge temps after pitching warm means there's a fair chance the ferment will take off too soon before the temp of the wort catches up.

Worst case scenario chill the wort down to 15c. At least the train will run a little slower.

Warren -

 

[Green Iguana]

Thats exactly what I was thinking Warren, I have placed the starter in the fridge at 14 C, will pitch after the brew has cooled overnight to the same temp......

Cheers

 

[Green Iguana]

Ross, adding a kg of munich really boosts the maltiness of a bitter, I find that adding the munich and reducing the crystal gives a full malty taste, I also usually up the bittering hops to balance out the munich......

Cheers