pilsner hop advice

[stuartf]

About to do my 3rd pilsner tomorrow and looking for some advice for hops. Previous 2 have used hallertau mit. This time I have saaz and tettnang in stock so was planning to use one of them. Thinking of going with saaz as I have some bohemian pilsner malt so seems appropriate tonuse a Czech hop exclusively? Also any point in chucking in some melanoidin malt or is there enough melanoids in pilsner malt without it?

 

[mattjm]

I often do the pils saaz combo, its the obvious choice. My next pilsner will be tettnang though. You have two well paired choices.

 

[stuartf]

Yeah trying to get my summer beers sorted now so I'll probably end up doing a batch each of saaz, tett and hallertau so I can compare them all

 

[Lethaldog]

Saaz is my go to Pilsner hop!

 

[Batz]

Saaz is my go to Pilsner hop!

+1

 

[MHB]

Tettnang is genetically identical to Saaz. The only difference is terroir (which makes for some interesting thinking about)
And yes along with Hallertau Mittlefruh among my favourite hops for Pilsner.
Mark

 

[manticle]

All three are beautiful choices. Hard to go wrong if they are fresh.

 

[yankinoz]

Tettnang and Saaz work fine in pilsners, but so do many others that aren't German or Czech. Sticking to place of origin ingredients is a good strategy, but not mandatory. Some time try Helga or Sterling, maybe Melon. Challenger works in APAs, Willamette in English bitters. If everyone stayed faithful to BJCP descriptions and national origins, the Kiwis could neither brew beer nor export ingredients, since they own no BJCP styles that I know of, unless that bland brown stuff they used to brew has made it in.

Melanoidin malt in a pilsner? Keep it under two percent of grist.

 

[stuartf]

To be honest the melanoidin was only a thought because i have some sitting around and want to use it up. Probably end up putting it into an ale of some sort

 

[Brewman_]

I would use Saaz T45 as bittering Hop, Alpha 6%

Then Saaz T90 alpha 3.5 % as follows,
Some at 10 minutes.
Some as aroma dry hop, between 0.5 and 1g/L

Cheers Steve

 

[Weizguy]

My fave Pils that I brew is a Czech-style with exclusively Saaz hopping.
While we're offering other options here, I'd suggest Southern Cross, just based on their description and the fact that I have a lot of it and need to use it,

If you use the Melanoidin, play it safe and only use a little bit, as it can overwhelm your other subtle grain, hop and yeast characters.
FWIW, I use the Wyeast W2278 yeast (one from the Urquell family of yeasts, when they brewed a multi-strain beer) for my Czech Pils.

 

[stuartf]

For this batch I'm thinking hop at 60m with 35g 10m with 30g and 5m with 30g only have dried yeast saflager 34/70 (used this on my last pilsner and like it) ferment at 13C. Just use the pilsner malt and forget the melanoidin. Repeat the hopping and temp regime with each of the 3 hops to figure out which I prefer. I'm sure they will all be very drinkable anyway.

 

[MHB]

No reason not to like 34/70, something like 45% of the beer brewed in Germany is made with 34/70 or one of it's liquid equivalents.
Personally I think it excels in North German styles of Lager/Pilsner where the aim is clean and crisp, for Bohemian Pilsner the Urquell/Budvar/Czech Pilsner is more to my taste, but that's just personal taste.

Mark