Czech Please Czech Pils

One style I have been wanting to make for a while is a classic Czech Pilsner.  So I took advantage of the last months of cold weather on Misery Mountain to make my second lager (first was the Rensselager a year ago).  Now that CZCP is bottled and going into a second lagering in the fridge, I think its time to put the recipe up here.  Its nothing fancy- this style is all about trying to control a few variables, and using the right ingredients.  The Ingredients part I had down…the variables, thats a little more tricky when you don’t have legitimate temperature control, and rely on the ambient temperature of an earthen cellar.  Still, thats never stopped me in the past, and I figured I’d give it a shot.

Czech Please Czech Pils

9# Pilsner Malt

.5# Cara Munich

1oz Saaz Pellets (3.8%AA) @ 60, 1oz @30, 1 oz @ 15 mins

Pilsner Urquell Yeast White Labs 2001

OG: 1.045

FG: 1.008

2 months Lagering at temperature range in upper 40s ramping up to upper 50s

5% ABV

As for flavors…its probably a little grainier than expected for the style, which I think is still a result of dialing in my mashing process and temperature of sparging.  I mashed the same way I had been doing other beers, around 154 degrees, for an hour, with a sparge about 10 degrees above that.  This process worked out great for an english mild but for the pilsner I think it extracted too much of the grainy flavors from the malt, which I am potentially attributing to sparging too hot, or without even distribution of heat.  The hoppiness is also more low-key than expected- I had already added an extra ounce of hops to compensate for their age and frozenness, but I could have gone ahead and doubled it.  On the plus side, I used Whirlfloc tablets for the first time, which worked great- though you can’t tell from the above photo, this stuff is crystal clear when its not fogging up the outside of the glass.   I will probably make another one of these next winter.  I am seeing how the beer develops for now by keeping it in the fridge, but its definitely been my go-to just-need-a-satisfying-beer-after-work kind of beer.  you know the kind.

Happy brewing and beering out there

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Killiaen van Rensselager

Yes..I have hit rock bottom in beer name puns.  It finally happened.

I was determined to make a Vienna Lager, since I had not made a true lager yet and when I started the beer it was in the middle of winter, perfect timing for long cold periods of fermentation.  I had also been enjoying Sixpoint’s Vienna Pale Ale, the beer they make special for Fette Sau, and thought I could do something similar with a lager recipe using Vienna malt.  My result is a pretty far split from that beer, or maybe even a traditional Vienna Lager, but after finally having cracked some of the first bottles I am pretty happy with the results.  There was a lot of flying blind for me with this one so I am going to get started with the explanations.

The recipe began with a recipe from John Palmer’s How to Brew – the primary change I made was the replacement of Black patent malt with Coffee malt, and the use of San Francisco Lager yeast from White Labs instead of the recommendation- this was because I wanted a yeast that would still perform with a greater temperature range.

3.3 Lbs Pale LME @ 60 Mins

3.3 Lbs Pale LME @ 0 Mins

.25 Lbs Vienna Malt

.25 Lbs 40L Crystal Malt

.25 Lbs 120 L Crystal Malt

.25 Lbs Coffee Malt

3 oz Liberty pellet hops @40 min, 20 min, 10 min, 1 oz each

O.G.: 1.046

F.G. 1st bottling: 1.018

F.G. 2nd bottling: 1.014

Yeast: White Labs #810, San Francisco Lager

I dont think I have any pictures from brew day, but here is a shot of what beer I bottled after 3 weeks, and what I racked to a 2 gallon keg for lagering.  I let the 2 gallons lager for 1 month in the cellar, even though some sources say lagering for 6 months is appropriate.  Still, it was a small amount, and the fermentation moved pretty quickly.

More pictures to follow.  After tasting the batch that went through the secondary fermentation, I was wanting to name it something that referred to the ageing, as well as the fact that I made it upstate..So I decided to name it after Killiaen van Rensselager, the original Dutch “Patroon” who in the 1600’s owned pretty much everything between Misery Mountain and Albany County.  So we would have been part of his vast expanse of property- ironically, property he never saw, because while he was a major landowner overseas he never made the trip across the Atlantic himself, and conducted business through emissaries.  His legacy lives on, not only in the name of a city on the Hudson river across from Albany, but in the name of the county itself, as well as the geographical divisions of the counties.  His descendant Stephen van Rensselaer was “the last patroon” before the estate became dissolved, and late in life founded the Rensselaer School which would become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

KRL on the left, OKRL on the right

Getting back to beer…I decided to call the lager Killian van Rensselager or KRL and the secondary fermentation version Old KRL.  I tasted the two side by side after a few weeks in the bottles, and the two versions taste distinctly different.  KRL has a distinct creme brulee/maple flavor, probably brought on by the Crystal 120 in part.  I actually preferred it to the OKRL at this point, but with Lagers time is a huge factor, so things could change after a few months of bottle conditioning.  OKRL is markedly drier, with a bitter malt flavor up front and no sugary sweetness like KRL.  It has more of an alcoholic heat to it as well.  I am interested to see how the flavors will change- this is 2 months after bottling the OKRL.  The San Francisco Yeast seems to have left an imprint on both beers, as there is that sort of “steam beer” sulphury flavor in both of them, though more pronounced in the OKRL.   Happy brewing out there.  I heard there was a new branch of the operation starting out on Garretson Avenue, Staten Island…we will have to investigate these claims.

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