My wife does not like the beers I have made lately and think I will try a nice light pilsner. Any recipie suggestions. I don’t have lager capabilities yet.
Extract or All grain? I recommend doing a kolsch. Very light style german ale perfect gateway beer for people who prefer light pilsners.
Basically just 100% pils malt, 20-30 BUs and a German Kolsch strain. But I will say this, temp control is still critical. You need to ferment in the very low 60s for at least 72 hours (and preferably pitch in the high 50s) and you will need almost 2Xs the amount of yeast as with ales (a 3-4L unstirred starter would not be too big, crash cool, decant spent starter beer and pitch only slurry cold).
And, traditionally these things are lagered for 2-4 weeks or so. You can skip this if you must but the beer might be a bit hazy otherwise. It is going to be difficult making a pils-like beer without a few weeks cold conditioning.
A cheap chest freezer and a $50 Johnson Controller could fix that. ;)
What doesn’t she like about the beers you’ve made so far? What kind of beer does she normally drink? If she is a normally BMC drinker, why not brew something even more simple like a blonde?
What about something like this?
I was thinking of getting this myself.
No matter what the recipe, you’ll need to be able to ferment cool (maybe high 50s, low 60s-not as cold as a lager) and cold condition the beer after it’s done in order to produce a similar beer.
+1
As Denny and majorvices have indicated…
The fermentation process is the most critical part of the beer making process. The best wort in the world won’t make good beer if it’s not properly fermented.
Where and what temp are you fermenting your ales?
A cellar is an ideal spot to ferment especially during the winter months but even then depending on where you live can be too warm. Let us know.
you could also use the white labs sanfrancisco lager yeast. i think it is 810. i have used it when i had some difficulty controlling temp. it will tolerate a little warmer temp. i still think you are better off getting the temp problem fixed first as i wasn’t happy with how it turned out.
I have a grease pit in my barn and right now it is pushing 70 right now. usually it is 60 to 65. I might just have to wait till we get a few cool nights to get it cooled back down. I do all grain 15 gallon batches.
Would any one use sugar in a Pils to dry it out a little more?
Nope. Just a long low temp mash.
You can fabricate a cheap swamp cooler to get the temps down where you need them. 70 degrees ambient is too warm for anything save Saisons and some belgians.
Right. The cold conditioning is, I think, a very important factor here.
I’ve made plenty of bastard lagers/pilseners for special occasions where it was a mainly BMC crowd, by using WY1056 and fermenting at my ambient basement temperature (60°F); I had really good results even when I opted to use sugar to keep things on the light side color-wise. I’m convinced that the cold aging really helped bring the illusion together.