Italian Pils

Brew Cat

Brew Cat

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Anyone use the weyerman Eraclea Italian pilsner malt?
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Just ordered some
 
Last edited:
since no response I assume none here make one
I was hoping for advice on the hopping rates
I don't generally dry hop with noble varieties
basically a hoppy German Pils
I'm following roughly the Weyerman recipe from their web site
many of the recipes I see cut the Erclea malt with other malts
need to establish a baseline
 
Sorry, I haven't used that grain, I'm also not any help with anything "lager"
 
I have not heard of the grain, but i am curious on what the difference between an Italian pilsner and a czech pils is. further reading needed.

recipe looks simple, but im surprised on the IBU.

ill read about the style
 
interesting. i had an italian pils at a brewery on thursday that was pretty good(best of the beers that i had). I didnt realize that they were usually dryhopped.

Is it normal to dryhop at high krausen on italian pils? i would be worried about hop creep and excess haziness. depending on how long your lager takes to ferment you could be on those hops for much longer then your alotted 5 days? maybe shift that dryhop until you do your D-rest and raise your temps. you would also get better utilization of the hops slightly warmer.

according to the little bit that i read, it seems that some haziness is ok, but they also dont generally wanna be crazy dry. I am not familiar with Diamond lager yeast.
 
thanks for taking a look I've not made one before either
just put in an order for materials at northern Brewer that had 25% off and the Eraclea malt looked interesting
I'm a sucker for Pilsner malt to try
I did like you and looked it up
I changed the dry hop to cold hops like you mentioned and per this article
https://byo.com/articles/italian-pils/
this next article dry hops twice beginning and cold
https://homebrewingdiy.beer/index.php/2021/07/06/deep-dive-on-brewing-italian-pilsners/
Ill have to contemplate this
 
have you made this yet? I have time today to burn on making recipes and doing ordering so i might build one an italian pils recipe for the future!
 
Ok so here is where i am so far. I like the concept of this beer style. i had one in NC that i enjoyed a few weeks ago.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/embed/1626840

I have Perle, Loral, wilamette, sterling, fuggle, Mandarina Bavaria, and magnum as my noble/noble adjacent hops.

yeast wise, i have Apex Munich lager, Augustiner, and mexican lager yeasts on hand.

i would think that pressure fermented munich lager or augustiner would work well for this.

I might reduce the total amount of the dryhop...

what do you think???
 
For a German style pils, Munich or Augustiner will work great. For Mexican, you're well over hopped. Were you to do Mexican I'd probably do the Mandarina Bavaria with a possible light dry hop. I did two last year with only Citra, about .25 oz up front on a 6 gallon batch and the balance at the end to about 20 ibus and it was right in the lane for Modelo, etc.

I think I'd leave the dry hop alone, it will add a nice touch here.
At 5.3 ABV, 30 IBU will be an easy drinking beer that should be a winner with all but your typical Ohioans looking for the biggest ABV beer you have :p
 
I have not brewed it yet I'm backed up
I have one more ahead of it
for yeast Ill pitch the Diamond lager
"https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/embed/1622954"
I may change the water yet
after talking with Jamil today I will not ferment under pressure
he said the only people who should ferment under pressure are commercial brewers because it speeds up the turn around time doesn't make better beer might even cause harm under pressure initially
I'll let it ferment with just an airlock until its almost done then spund it
 
Brew Cat said:
after talking with Jamil today I will not ferment under pressure
he said the only people who should ferment under pressure are commercial brewers because it speeds up the turn around time doesn't make better beer might even cause harm under pressure initially
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, pressure fermenting is often misunderstood by even the most astute brewers. The pressure allows the brewer control ester production by letting some of the co2 to stay in solution. It is tool available to brewers and is especially useful for homebrewers since most of our fermenters are shallow and co2 is expelled easily. Deeper or taller fermenters found in bigger breweries will capture the co2 and the hydrostatic pressure (from greater depth) will aid in retaining co2, which keeps the fermentation clean.

Lagers benefit the most from this technique, especially when a clean palate is the goal. I can find no reason to pressure ferment an ale. The pressure is only detrimental to the yeast if the pressure is excessive or over a prolonged period of time. I found that modest pressure at lager temperatures works the best. 5 to 7.5 psi at 53-55F is the sweet spot for 34/70 yeasts.

I think it's an excellent idea for an Italian Pils, it will get you a clean, crisp beer. Just be careful when adding the dry hop, if it has too much co2 in solution, it could become a volcano.
 
HighVoltageMan! said:
Unfortunately, pressure fermenting is often misunderstood by even the most astute brewers. The pressure allows the brewer control ester production by letting some of the co2 to stay in solution. It is tool available to brewers and is especially useful for homebrewers since most of our fermenters are shallow and co2 is expelled easily. Deeper or taller fermenters found in bigger breweries will capture the co2 and the hydrostatic pressure (from greater depth) will aid in retaining co2, which keeps the fermentation clean.

Lagers benefit the most from this technique, especially when a clean palate is the goal. I can find no reason to pressure ferment an ale. The pressure is only detrimental to the yeast if the pressure is excessive or over a prolonged period of time. I found that modest pressure at lager temperatures works the best. 5 to 7.5 psi at 53-55F is the sweet spot for 34/70 yeasts.

I think it's an excellent idea for an Italian Pils, it will get you a clean, crisp beer. Just be careful when adding the dry hop, if it has too much co2 in solution, it could become a volcano.
Click to expand...
I've read that the larger fermenters have inherent pressure do to size and that is one thing that home brewers are trying to simulate
I've also heard that the commercial brewer will pressurize the fermenter higher to speed up the fermentation by being able to ferment at a higher temperature because that pressure will suppress those esters
basically a home brewer can take his time and ferment colder and slower to suppress those esters
the biggest benefit for the home brewer is limit the O2 ingress late in the fermentation and being able to carbonate in the same vessel then transfer under pressure
I've done the 5psi like you mention but didn't notice a difference I let the pressure build up when I do the d-rest
 
HighVoltageMan! said:
Unfortunately, pressure fermenting is often misunderstood by even the most astute brewers. The pressure allows the brewer control ester production by letting some of the co2 to stay in solution. It is tool available to brewers and is especially useful for homebrewers since most of our fermenters are shallow and co2 is expelled easily. Deeper or taller fermenters found in bigger breweries will capture the co2 and the hydrostatic pressure (from greater depth) will aid in retaining co2, which keeps the fermentation clean.

Lagers benefit the most from this technique, especially when a clean palate is the goal. I can find no reason to pressure ferment an ale. The pressure is only detrimental to the yeast if the pressure is excessive or over a prolonged period of time. I found that modest pressure at lager temperatures works the best. 5 to 7.5 psi at 53-55F is the sweet spot for 34/70 yeasts.

I think it's an excellent idea for an Italian Pils, it will get you a clean, crisp beer. Just be careful when adding the dry hop, if it has too much co2 in solution, it could become a volcano.
Click to expand...
to add to this, i listened to a podcast on the master brewers podcast about pressure fermentation and ester production. ill find the podcast. the take away was that it noticeably reduces ester production(creates cleaner beer) faster.

I dont bother with it on things like my black lager or viennas because there is more then enough malt flavors to hide most esters that the yeast produce. On my golden lagers(big and small) i have found it to very much improve the quality of the beer, requiring far less age to get a clean crispy beer.

I posted an article that i found a while ago that had a best practices portion for production brewing complied by a brewery consultant at big asian breweries.

i give the yeast generally 24-36 hrs with just a blowoff tube to get things rolling and get my temps sorted out.

then once i have roughly 1p drop i will cap it and set the spunding valve to 10 psi

once i hit between 60-70% attenuation i will increase the pressure to 15 psi and increase the temp to 18c for the D-rest and to keep the yeasties going to completion.

it has worked really well so far for making clean crisp beer quickly.(generally about 10 days grain to glass for a golden lager @ 5%)
 
Brew Cat said:
basically a home brewer can take his time and ferment colder and slower to suppress those esters
Click to expand...
Not completely. I have fermented Wyeast 2124 at 46F with a massive pitch and would get white grape esters about 50% of the time, it was very frustrating. With Fermentis 34/70 I would get a lemon character and to take it to 46F would just stop the yeast (both are Weihenstephan yeasts). But when I put it under pressure at lager temperatures, I found this fruitiness was completely gone, then I discovered that both yeast perform really well at 52-54F when modest pressure is applied.

I haven't look back since and wouldn't do any lager any other way.

Bigbre04 said:
masterbrewerspodcast.com episode 230: underpressure
Click to expand...
Awesome podcast. There is a lot of good info from that podcast on a regular bases.
 
HighVoltageMan! said:
Not completely. I have fermented Wyeast 2124 at 46F with a massive pitch and would get white grape esters about 50% of the time, it was very frustrating. With Fermentis 34/70 I would get a lemon character and to take it to 46F would just stop the yeast (both are Weihenstephan yeasts). But when I put it under pressure at lager temperatures, I found this fruitiness was completely gone, then I discovered that both yeast perform really well at 52-54F when modest pressure is applied.

I haven't look back since and wouldn't do any lager any other way.


Awesome podcast. There is a lot of good info from that podcast on a regular bases.
Click to expand...
i have had very good luck with Apex Munich Lager and Augustinian Lager. The August is VERY clean when fermented at 15c under 10->15psi.
 
HighVoltageMan! said:
Not completely. I have fermented Wyeast 2124 at 46F with a massive pitch and would get white grape esters about 50% of the time, it was very frustrating. With Fermentis 34/70 I would get a lemon character and to take it to 46F would just stop the yeast (both are Weihenstephan yeasts). But when I put it under pressure at lager temperatures, I found this fruitiness was completely gone, then I discovered that both yeast perform really well at 52-54F when modest pressure is applied.

I haven't look back since and wouldn't do any lager any other way.


Awesome podcast. There is a lot of good info from that podcast on a regular bases.
Click to expand...
I thought the 2124 was the Bohemian strain
I could see that with 34 70 since it says fruity on the package
I've been using Diamond from LalBrew better attenuation and floc very clean yeast
 
I just looked up The Wyeast 2124 since Ive never used it
It apparently is the Carlsberg strain which is Danish
why would they call it Bohemian
Its also odd that they don't even recommend it for Czech styles
Im sure its fine for a German or Italian Pils
the naming is just strange
 
Brew Cat said:
I thought the 2124 was the Bohemian strain
I could see that with 34 70 since it says fruity on the package
I've been using Diamond from LalBrew better attenuation and floc very clean yeast
Click to expand...
i would seriously look at apex augustin lager. its very good and clean. also cheap.
 
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