There’s something to be said for ultimate simplicity sometimes.  There’s something even more to be said when it comes together in your beer.  Pilsner is the ultimate SMASH beer, maybe the original SMASH beer.

When clean Pilsner malt and nobel hops come together in a perfect balance it just tastes like beer.  Analog and true.

John takes a shot at adding some gypsum for his Pilsner water treatments.  He brewed up a great Pilsner as a result and we’d been drinking it off an on all summer.  We finally got around to cracking a bottle on camera.

This beer is part of our efforts of playing with water mineral additions to see how it effects the final flavor of the beer.  John added 4 grams of gypsum into this brew hoping to help sharpen or brighten the hops a bit.  A good German Pils should have a nice balance of sweet grainy malt character.  But it should also have a distinctive Nobel hop nose with a moderately pronounced bitterness.

We think we are fighting agains high levels of Sodium Chloride in our water, which favors malt flavors.  So the addition of the Sulfate from the gypsum should help with the hops.

We also noted the exceptional clarity of this brew.  Despite being bottle conditioned, a careful pour really still gave us super clear beer. That’s what extended lagering in the bottle with give you too I suppose.  But the additional calcium from the gypsum should also have helped out with the flocculation of the yeast as well.  The results are pretty clear (see that pun there!).

Pilsner is simple and straightforward… so is this quick video.  Enjoy.
BREW ON!