Bohemian Pilsner Recipe

For this year, we set a goal to become master of lagers. To start moving towards this goal, we need plan to brew lagers. The first lager we are going to brew is this one – so here is the Bohemian Pilsner recipe:

Recipe Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Boil Size: 6.5 Gallons
Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Mash Efficiency: 72%

Ingredients:

10 lbs Pilsner Malt
.75 lbs Dextrine Malt
1.5 oz Saaz Hops (3.5 %AA) boiled 60 mins.
1 oz Saaz Hops (3.5 %AA) boiled 30 mins.
1 oz Saaz Hops (3.5 %AA) boiled 10 mins.
1 oz Saaz Hops (3.5 %AA) boiled 0 mins.
Yeast: White Labs WLP800 Pilsner Lager

Predictions:

Original Gravity: 1.054
Terminal Gravity: 1.016
Color: 4.22 °SRM
Bitterness: 39.6 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.0 %

Notes:

To get better at making lagers, we’ve pinpointed two areas for improvement. The first area is yeast management. I plan to make a large starter for this beer. Basically, I am going to make a 3 gallon beer using malt extract and a little hops and let the yeast do its thing in the fermenter. I might even brew a second starter beer just to get the yeast to a point where they will do the best job possible for the Bohemian Pilsner. The plan is to siphon the starter beer off the yeast cake and then pour the pilsner wort right on top of it.

The second area is water. I plan to use a good proportion of distilled water for this recipe – at least 50 percent will be distilled and the rest will be filtered water from my tap.