Looking for Czech Pils tips?

I am preparing to do a Czech Pilsner here’s what I’ve got so far…

I’ll be doing a 2L yeast starter with a stir plate, oxygenate with pure O2, and fermenting in a keezer with temp control.

I want to learn more about mashing. I’ve been able to hack a fly sparging set up together, and it’s been efficient enough. But, I am intrested in using some new techniques. I’m considering doing a dedoction - just for the fun of it.

So I’m looking for some tips or different techniques that I could look into for this Czech Pils.

One thing that stands out to me right away is the chalk in your water profile.  Its pretty much useless.  Without running that through Bru’nwater, I also find the lack of acid suspicious.

+1. Though the Pils style will call for a slightly different approach, for a light colored beer I use 8.5 gal distilled with 2.6 grams Cal Chloride and Gypsum, 2.4 g Epsom salt, .4 grams Non-Iodine Salt, and 5ml lactic acid.  I try to steer clear of Baking Soda, Pickling Lime, and Chalk. That gets me at ~5.4-5.5 pH in a base + 5% 10-60*L C malt combination which is my standard for 90% of my beers.

For future use in your water profile, I would ditch the chalk and use pickling lime instead.  Chalk is notoriously difficult to dissolve in water, it has to be really hot to force it to go into solution.  Pickling lime dissolves pretty easily and works the same way as chalk in the mash.  You can find it in stores that sell food canning supplies.

For a Pils you want really soft water. I ran the water profile for Pilsen water through Bru’n Water and if you leave out the chalk or (pickling lime) you will be fine.  The rest of the minerals are pretty much on the money for a Pilsen water profile  I assumed 3.5 gallons of water for your mash which is 1.3 quarts/lb.  I normally go 1.5 quarts/lb (4 gallons) but your brew system may have volume limits  You can go with this or use Brewbama’s idea.  The predicted mash pH at 3.5 gallons of mash liquor was 5.69 according to Bru’n Water so as Denny and Brewbama mentioned, a bit of lactic acid or a small amount of acidified malt will help bring the pH to the proper range.

Personally, I don’t put water salts in my sparge liquor, I just acidify the distilled water (in my case Reverse Osmosis water, which is the same thing) with phosphoric acid to get the pH in the 5.2-5.6 pH range. That said, adding minerals to the sparge liquor is your choice.  If you don’t have a pH meter, you will probably be OK sparging with just plain distilled water as the mash will act as a buffer to keep the pH from getting too high.  If you don’t already have one, you should consider investing in a pH meter and calibration solutions.  It is a valuable brewery tool.

Regarding doing a decoction, I personally wouldn’t do one for this beer but again that is your choice if you want to play with learning how to do decoctions.  The malts today are really well modified and you really don’t need to do one.  A single infusion mash at 152 would be fine, but it’s your beer so you can make it like you want.

Just my .02.  I am sure others will add to this as well.

The Briess Pilsen malt has a very high Diastatic Power, at 170 Lintner. It will convert quickly. A decoctions will add a point or two to the OG by making more starch available, and Maillard reactions will be produced.

Just a casual observation on the salt additions - you have a lot of pushes and pulls lined up there, but I don’t think you need that much going on with a Czech Pale, and frankly, I would adopt a policy of heading in one direction at a time with a beer (i.e., for mashing - reducing pH on light colored beers and raising pH on dark colored beers).  If you are adding Epsom Salts and Calcium Chloride with a light colored beer, omit the baking soda, chalk and any item that increases alkalinity.  Run it through a water spreadsheet and see what it estimates the pH to be before any changes.  If you are concerned about minerality, then use lactic acid or phosphoric acid as the acid side adjustment to drive down the mash pH.  If you use pH neutral sparge water, you can probably skip any additions to that, or again, just a touch of lactic acid or phosphoric acid.

I don’t disagree with your “pushes and pulls” observation.  The sodium level in the Pilsen water profile is low (IIRC about 4 ppm) so you could probably get away without the baking soda.  I might stick with the picklng lime just to give a bit of alkalinity.  I am not in front of the brewing computer right now and if I recall from running the mineral additions Kevin specified through Bru’n Water, he got really close on this profile with everything he was adding and the lime gave only about 14 ppm of alkalinity.  If he left it out it also wouldn’t hurt.  Being that I like to closely match ion concentrations for the water profile I am using, I would keep them in mine, but that’s just me.

Pickling lime will raise the pH.  It needs to be lowered.

I’m curious about the guidance used for planning the water chemistry?  It doesn’t look like the adjustments that fit the grist.

Just the guy I was waiting for!

Not all heroes where capes.  :slight_smile:

Annie Johnson did an excellent presentation in Minneapolis Homebrew Con 2017 called “Czech Plz! What I Learned Brewing with the Czech Masters”. You should give it a listen.

Have you used Polaris in a beer like this before? I got an herbal-mint character (think Ricola cough drop) out of this the times I’ve used it, and I’d be hesitant to put it a clean lager like a Pils.

It is something like Menthol, or wintergreen.

I used the Beersmith water tool to match to the Czech profile. Maybe it’s time I look into this Bruinwater spreadsheet everyone is talking about  :wink:

Yeah. The BeerSmith water tool adds all kinds of salts to try to get really close to a profile. With Brunwater you add the salts manually. I only have Gypsum, Calcium Chloride, and Epsom salt on hand so those are all I ever use. I usually only use the first two plus Lactic acid and ball park it.

My personal preference for Pilsners (and most hoppy beers) is the Brunwater Yellow Balanced profile. But, I may differ from most folks.

I also use Beersmith. For the water profiles I use the yellow balanced, brown full, etc. These are the same profiles as the Bru’n Water spreadsheet. For a Czech pils I believe I used the yellow balanced profile, as was previously mentioned. I started with RO water and added 2g of calcium chloride to the mash. I didn’t add any minerals to the sparge.

This is my next planned style. If you learn anything else along the way, check back in! I planned to only use Saaz in mine and I’m definitely going to give that seminar a listen today.

Considering a decoction just because I liked the process that one time I did it but not entirely sold on if I want to lol

I’ve decided to switch to a Helles because I don’t have enough hops. I was hoping to use polaris as a bittering addition, but i’m second guessing that.

Next time maybe i’ll do a hallertau - saaz pilsner.

Just tried to do a dedoction and it was a total flop. I must have missed a step, because my gravity reading came out at 1.02  :o it should have been closer to 1.04

I need to read up on it some more, because after boiling the wort only raised the top of the mash bed to about 152. The rest of the bed was at 120. I only realized that after mashing out. I was able to salvage the brew by dumping everything back into the mash tun and mashed at 170 for 20min. The reading jumped up to 1.045 - so I guess that’s an efficiency bump?