Pilsner Feedback

[manticle]

What?

****, sorry to hear. Hope you recuperate your losses.

There's a lot of generosity in this community so if you put your location in your profile, I reckon you'll get offers of loans of equipment, donations of unwanted stuff to help you get setup or brewdays with locals to get you a cube or two to ferment in the interim.

Hope the thief gets botulism.

 

[Zorco]

Where does he live...

Where are you BK?

 

[BKBrews]

I'm on the Gold Coast. It's all good, most of my brew stuff that got stolen was only minor, like all of my salts and spares and shit like that. The only big thing that got stolen was my mini keg and stir plate. My golf clubs and all of my tennis racquets were stolen though and a few other bits and pieces and tools etc. more of an inconvenience than anything, but I have insurance so I will get it all back, will just take time.

 

[Zorco]

Goldie... cool.

Evidence my memory is junk sometimes. Sorry mate.

It is shit to have a thief ruin your day.

 

[Zorco]

Did they steal the burner??

 

[rude]

Mate sorry to hear about your robbery

Im like you never done a lager pils been reading this thread with interest cheers

This set back will give you more time to organise the way you go about it

From reading this I like the way Labels has chimed in keeping it simple which will suit me with just a simple
esky mash tun to keggle set up

I will be concentrating heavily on yeast health, mash PH ,ferment temp lagering

With a bit of luck hope you brew a cracker mate

cheers Rude

 

[BKBrews]

Did they steal the burner??

Hah they didn't - even left the stock pot. They did however take 8 bottles of my session IPA that I had been conditioning at 18 degrees in my fermentation fridge - 2 of which were being entered in the Gold Coast amateur brewing comp, so I'm pretty devoed about that!

 

[Ferg]

If there is any justice in the world they will try to inject or snort some of the brewing salts

 

[BKBrews]

I've decided I'm not going to be held back by a couple of wankers and I'm going to go ahead with the brew day. Just going to do a 4L starter and shake the shit out of it every 5min and see what happens.

So my question is, seeming as though my brewing salts were all taken, anyone foresee issues with using 100% untreated RO water? I guess I'm lucky it's a Pilsner and not an IPA. EZ Water reckons my pH will be 5.49 if I use 140g acidulated and 100% RO.

 

[Rocker1986]

I use 100% distilled water with minimal salt additions for my pilsners and they always turn out really well. I think you should be alright, besides first attempts at styles are never perfect anyway Sorry to hear about those cretins stealing from you though

 

[manticle]

If there's one style in which you can dispense with mineral additions, it's this one, especially if your water is soft.

Malt will bring some calcium and magnesium, you could add a small pinch of table salt for chloride (I'd just go without).

Go for it.

 

[BKBrews]

And on the sage advice of the AHB forum, the Big Knobs Brewing Co Break and Enter Pilsner was born.

 

[kaiserben]

Sorry to hear about the thieving bastards, BKBRews.

If there is any justice in the world they will try to inject or snort some of the brewing salts

If we hear about a swathe of calcium overdoses on the Gold Coast we'll know what happened.

 

[Mardoo]

I did countertop starters before I had a stirplate. Never had any issues with the ferments. I just shook them every hour or so. As you get towards the end it'll foam up quite a lot. Be sure to leave some headroom to allow for this.

 

[BKBrews]

I did countertop starters before I had a stirplate. Never had any issues with the ferments. I just shook them every hour or so. As you get towards the end it'll foam up quite a lot. Be sure to leave some headroom to allow for this.

I did a 4L starter in a 5L carboy. Just waiting for it to come down to pitching temp then will add the yeast.

Will probably brew tomorrow, hopefully crash the starter tomorrow night, then decant and pitch on Sunday morning.

 

[labels]

I make starters in 2L wine bottles (flagons) one week before brewing and ferment them at normal room temperatures whether they are lager or ale yeasts. Fully fermented by brew day, I just throw most of the beery liquid out and pitch the slurry. I get four or six pitches out of one pack of Wyeast doing this.

Been doing this for years without problems. I also pitch my lagers warm but chill them pretty quickly to fermentation temperature. This reduces lag time and still produces ultra-clean lagers

 

[BKBrews]

I made a 4L starter yesterday with 400g LDME and pitched the yeast when it got to about 22 degrees (last night around 5pm). It has stayed at room temp (about 23 degrees in our air conditioned unit) overnight and I have shaken the shit out of it every hour that I've been awake. Zero activity this morning? MAYBE a hint of a Krausen but that's being optimistic. What is going onnnnn?

 

[RdeVjun]

Depending on what you wish to achieve, you may wish to use a stepped starter approach, could be a bit ambitious to do prepare your starter in one step if you're expecting to pitch this weekend.
BTW, the only way to tell how your starter is progressing with any reliability is to measure the specific gravity, but I'd guess it won't have changed that much in 12 hours.

 

[BKBrews]

Already pitched to 4L unfortunately. Right, I was of the understanding that starters were quicker. Interesting. So if I put off my brew day until tomorrow, do you think it will be right to pitch by Sunday night/Monday morning?

 

[manticle]

How much yeast in 4 L wort?