Back at it again and this time I brewed up a Bohemian Pilsner!

Recipe Source: Toronto Brewing Co

Beer Specifications

Beer Name: Bohemian Pilsner Beer Style: Czech Pilsner Recipe Type: All Grain Batch Size: 5 gallons / 18.9 litres Estimated SRM: 4° Estimated IBU: 33 Estimated OG: 1.051 Estimated FG: 1.009 Estimated ABV: 5.5%

Grain Bill/Fermentables

LBS FERMENTABLES 8 Pilsner Malt 1 Munich Malt

Hops

OZ TIME HOPS 1 60 min Mt. Hood 0.5 30 min Mt. Hood 0.5 0 min Mt. Hood

Yeast

# YEAST 1 SafLager W-34/70

Fermentation Schedule

42 days Primary 7-14 days Bottle Conditioning Optimal Fermentation Temperature: 48-72°F / 9-22°C

Place fermenter in stable temperature, out of the light.

Directions

Mash Temperature: 148°F / 64°C Mash Time: 60 min Strike Water Volume: 3 gallons / 11.4 litres Sparge Water Volume: 5 gallons / 18.9 litres Boil Duration: 90 min

For those who have been following along for a while now you may remember that way back at the very beginning I attempted to brew a similar recipe for my very first brew day. Let’s just say that one left a lot to be desired once the initial hype of “I BREWED MY OWN BEER!” went away. This time I wanted things to be different and looking back I think I’ve pinpointed the problem: the yeast. You see I had received the bulk of my equipment and, more important to the story, the beer kit as a gift which was awesome. What wasn’t so awesome is that by the time we got everything into the fridge the poor liquid yeast had long been sitting on a warm cooler pack. That mixed with a few rookie mistakes are what I believe contributed to the off flavours in that first brew.

Now as a seasoned (note the sarcasm) homebrewer I was pretty sure I could avoid most of those same mistakes. I even carefully chose a pretty forgiving yeast, W-34/70, just in case :).

Brew day went well and I fermented the beer for full six weeks before bottling. Because I had no way to temperature control this I just let it ferment on my unfinished basement floor where it tends to remain somewhat cold. I opted not to transfer to secondary part way through and instead just let it ride.

Again, thankfully, I managed to not screw up the bottling process. So far everything was going smoothly!

My original gravity reading was 1.042 and my final gravity reading was 1.005 for an ABV of 4.86%.

I bottle conditioned with enough table sugar to target 2.5 volumes of CO2.

So the moment we’ve all been waiting for… how did it taste? Truthfully? Pretty darn good actually! It has a very clean pilsner-y taste but with a nice hint of up-front sweetness to it. The mid-range alcohol and bitterness values give it a nice rounded flavour that makes it very easy to drink.

While I almost completely swore off this beer style after my first outing I think I’m going to have to actually add it to a roster of beers to make regularly. Cheers!

P.S. – we called this brew “Rhapsody”, a fitting name for a bohemian pilsner 🙂