Hmmm[emoji848], those two malts are quite a bit more expensive than Best, Avangard, Viking, and the American malts that they could use- at least at the homebrew level. I guess they think the difference in the beer is worth the extra expense.
Nothing against Weyermann. I like them, but I only brew 3 gallons at a time so the extra cost feels negligible to me.
Yes, Weyermann must be considered a “premium” malt as they command premium prices.
On another forum, there was a post stating the brewer could not tell any difference in the same beer brewed with malts from different companies.
Barke is an older German Barley variety. It does have a rich flavor. Some say it is what most of the breweries around Munich use, don’t know if that ix true. Weyermann makes Barke Pils, Vienna, and Munich malts.
Barke Pils is my go to pils malt for everything from pils, lager, saison, blonde. compared to weyermann bopils it has more of a sweet white bread flavor and less straw, saltine cracker, hay flavor. It has great brewery performance, clears well, runs off clear and quickly, converts rapidly. To my palate and for my b rewday, Barke Pils is superior to any other pils malt I’ve ever tried.
just my experience, but I HATED viking pils. Took forever to convert, and had a one dimensional straw flavor and took a long time to clear. I will be trying the Rahr North Star pils soon, in hopes of finding a domestic replacement for Barke Pils, I’ll keep you posted
My advice for a great german pils- sulfate to around 100-150ppm, and use the best quality noble type hops you can find, dont get hung up on varietal; Liberty, or Mt Hood hops that are in great condition make a MUCH better beer than HMF thats in poor condition (and in my experience, homebrewers get shafted on the quality of alot of imported euro hops). and for the love of all that is holy DONT dry hop.
That absolutely isn’t my experience. I make German pils a lot and my sulfate is usually in the 100-150 area. I mean, that’s what the Germans do, so I don’t understand the recommendation to not do it.
I used Viking Pilsner malt in several batches and I found it to be fine. It did have a noticeable flavor, I’ll go with straw since you mentioned it. I kinda liked that flavor. On the other hand, I am going through a bag of Bestmalz Pilsnen now. I also like this one. I find it to produce light clean crisp beers, but I also find it has very muted flavors. It mostly just gets out of the way.
The most recent grains used by us is Ireks Pils, and Weyermann Floor Malted Bo-Pils. We had good luck with Ireks. The Weyermann is good too.
Brewed 10 gallons of a Czech style Pils with the Weyermann, single grain. With Saaz hops. Diamond Lager yeast. Soft water.
It came out clean, crisp, and very light. My neighbor and brewing friend (Dave) said it is the perfect summer beer. But Dave detected a very minor hint of green apple. Very, very, slight. I think it is from the Saaz hops, because I have noticed this in our other beers brewed with Saaz.
There are many recipes directly from the brewmasters on another forum, which usually gets people banned when mentioned. There is a recipe for bitburger. It has 2 malts.