I brew litres and litres of the stuff usuall 150L per weekend of brewing and to me it's the easiest beer to make. There are certain rules to success along with a lot of myths. Firstly don't overuse the specilaty malts - stick witn pilsner, munich light and vienna. Crystal malts, melanoidin etc should be added in very small proportions. Secondly, watch with your hopping. Late hopping especialy with Saaz will impart a very grassy flavour that does not mellow out with aging. First wort hopping is the bees knees and is the only hopping schedule in my lagers.
Fermenting is where it's all at. You can pitch warm, I pitch at 25C and oxygenate with pure O2. This really kick starts fermentation but I do it get into a temp controlled chest freezer pretty quickly after pitching. Also I use 2 litre starters that have completely fermented out and the beery liquid discarded. Ferment at the yeast lab's recommended higher end of the temp range - not the lower end. When fermentation is nearly done - when the krausen starts to fall, crank the temp to 20C and hold until the krausen goes completely. Then crash back to fermentation temp. After that drop just 1C per day, hold for 3 days at 3C, crash to -2C and hold for 10 days approx then keg. You will have a super clean commercial grade lager beer. Easy Peasy.
