Brewing a German Pils Beer At Home (Grain to Glass)

this beer is a german pills a crisp clean and refreshing light beer that i brewed in my garage in this video i'll show you how i made it a few tips and tricks along the way in a review of the final beer at the end let's brew a german pills as the name implies is made with authentic german ingredients for this recipe i'm using a hundred percent german pilsner malt and holler towel hops holler towel hops are one type of german noble hop variety that gives a mild floral and spicy aroma [Music] the main step of brewing is the mash this is when hot water is mixed with the grain to create a sweet liquid called warts for this six gallon batch i'm starting with three gallons of reverse osmosis water that i'll heat to 171 degrees fahrenheit which for my system is 15 degrees above my strike temperature when i pump my strike water over to the mash tun the system is going to cool to 156 degrees which is my strike temperature for today while the water is preheating i'm going to run the grain through the mill and get it ready for the mash [Music] what we're looking for is to crack it enough so the water can fully penetrate and extract these sugars within the grain during the mash the key though is leaving the husk mostly intact so that it can act as a natural filter during the lottery my mash tun is now at a 156 degrees fahrenheit and i'm adding in my salts to adjust my water chemistry don't stress over this step if you're a new brewer this step will really not make any significant changes in the final beer it's more of a fine tuning process however it is important to use good tasting chlorine free water i'm also adding in two milliliters of lactic acid to my water to ensure the room temperature ph of the mash stays within about 5.2 to 5.6 and now it's time to add the grain so i'm shutting off the pump this step is called the dough in the goal is to slowly and evenly mix the grain with the hot water to avoid getting any dough balls pouring the grain in too quickly can cause a grain to clump up and prevents water from evenly penetrating the grain [Music] now that the grain is mixed in the system has cooled to 148 degrees which will be the temperature we need to maintain for the next 45 minutes i'm going to turn on my pump and slowly open up my recirculation valve to begin recirculating through the grain bed [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's been about 10 minutes i'm going to take a small sample so that i can check the ph i like to use a small bowl of ice water to cool the sample down to room temperature before taking the measurement [Music] we are right around 5.2 while the mash is finishing up i will add an additional seven gallons of water and one milliliter of lactic acid to my hlt and i'll preheat all that to 170 degrees fahrenheit for the water step [Music] it's been 45 minutes i'm now going to raise the mash temperature to 168 degrees for the water step the purpose of this step is to aid in the extraction of the sugars in the grain the warmer temperature of the mash and the hot sparge water will help increase the extraction efficiency as i move the liquid over to the boil kettle [Music] this type of sparge process is called a fly sparge and the goal is to slowly rinse the grain with fresh sparge water at the same flow rate as i transfer to the boil kettle [Music] this is about how fast i transfer and for my system this takes about 40 minutes if you go too fast during this step you risk leaving too much sugar in the mash bed which results in a lower efficiency i'm doing a 90 minute boil for this beer so we have a little more water than usual our pre-boil volume for today will be nine and a quarter gallons the reason for the extended boil is to reduce the chance of dms which is an off flavor that sometimes occurs with light grain recipes like this one i have about seven gallons transferred over to the boil kettle so i'm going to kick on the heater as the remainder of the wart is transferred [Music] we are at full volume so i'm going to give this a quick stir and take a small sample to measure the pre-boil gravity i'm using the anton part easy dense to do this which is a digital hydrometer this meter measures the density of the warts so that i can record the extraction efficiency of the mash i love this meter because it only uses a small sample size and unlike a refractometer the easy dense can be used at all stages during the brewing and fermentation process it pairs with the brewmeister app to quickly and accurately record the density which we'll need to do multiple times during the beer production process if you would like one of these meters use my coupon code to save 35 for a limited time only we are coming up to a boil so i'm going to add a few drops of anti-foaming agent to help reduce the chance of boil overs i like to use this agent from more beer i'll let the hot break finish up and then i'll add my first hop addition [Music] this is a quarter ounce of hauler towel which will only add about three ibus to the beer i'll let this boil for 30 minutes and then i'll add my next hop addition [Music] it's been 30 minutes i'm now adding my next charge of hops [Music] i'll let that boil for another 30 minutes and then add in my third charge there are 15 minutes remaining in the boil i'm now adding in one world flock tablet which is used to help clarify the beer and flocculate some of that protein in the warts for the final 10 minutes of the boil i'm adding in a little bit of yeast nutrient with my fourth hop addition we are almost done the 90 minute boil is finished so i'm turning off the heater and i'm going to start a five minute whirlpool as i add in my last hop addition [Music] it's been five minutes i'm going to turn off the pump and let this rest for 10 minutes so that the troop can form a nice cone in the center of the kettle it is time to knock out i have my ground water connected to my plate chiller which will be used to cool down the wart as it's transferred into the fermenter my groundwater here in southern california is pretty warm at this time of year so i have to do the remainder of the cooling after connecting my fermenter to the glycol chili [Music] for most beers i like to chill the fermenter to about two degrees below my desired fermentation temperature which for this pills will be 50 degrees while the fermenter is cooling i'm going to oxygenate my warts through the carbs stone on my unit tank for six gallons this is about 60 to 90 seconds at a flow rate of one liter per minute [Music] once the water is pumped full of oxygen i'll take a small sample to measure the oxygen concentration the ph and also the original gravity for most beers you want to shoot for about 10 to 15 ppm of oxygen next i will take the original gravity measurement with the easy dens i'll open up the brewmeister app on my phone and i'll save the measurement to today's batch the last step for today is to pitch the yeast about 36 hours ago i made a starter for my lager yeast i'll include a link down below if you'd like to learn more about that process when brewing lagers or strong beers it's important to pitch a fairly large amount of healthy yeast for a batch this size that usually requires about two to three pouches of yeast or a starter like i'm using i'm going to allow this to rise to 50 degrees and i'll keep it there for about a week until we hit a gravity of about 10 15. then i'm going to allow the tank to free rise to 60 degrees to finish fermentation once complete you want to dump the yeast from your fermenter or transfer the beer to a secondary fermenter for lagers it's best practice to chill the fermenter at a rate of about two to three degrees every 12 hours until you reach a lagering temperature of around 32 to 36 degrees fahrenheit the slow cooling process allows the yeast to remain stress free and active as they work during the lagering process i like to add one tablespoon of bio fine during this process to allow the clarity to get nice and bright allow the beer to lager for at least four weeks at this temperature to allow the yeast to polish up the beer [Music] and now for the best part the taste test this batch was brewed two months ago same exact recipe same process the first thing i noticed is the clarity crystal clear i could see right through it bright white head of foam at the top seems to be pretty strong too it's definitely hanging around to stay definitely has kind of a sweet toasted cracker type of aroma what really sticks out is the hops very floral another thing that's really coming through with this one is the herbal character of those hops it's very light it's dry you know i mashed this at 148 degrees fahrenheit i'm almost wondering if i brought that down to like 146 maybe that might dry it out even more without changing the recipe but definitely as i'm i'm sitting here that bitterness is starting to kick in it's lingering a little bit more yeah i love pilsners i will say that my favorite style is a czech pills i love the spiciness from the size and a little more maltiness in those recipes as well but this is a great beer it's super simple but i'm going to finish enjoying this beer thank you so much for hanging out for the german pills brew and let me know in the comments if you have any questions and don't forget to subscribe cheers

Channel: Ryan Michael Carter TV

Views: 17,471

Keywords: Yeti, Antonpaar, EasyDens

Id: CFp85KBB3cs

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022