Narziss' advice for pils

[Techbrau]

OG: 11.5 - 12 plato
Bitterness: 30-35
Color: 5.5 - 6.0 EBC

Water: between -1 and 1 dH residual alkalinity

Grist: 97% to 100% pilsner malt (2.8 to 3.0 EBC) with 0%-3% carapils. Lactic acid in both the mash and boil - presumably you want a pH of 5.5 in the mash and 5.1 in the boil, which he gives as general guidelines for light colored beers earlier in chapter 3.

He recommends using a hochkurz decoction mash, but using the technique that Nico has described for separating the husks from the endosperm and mashing them separately in order to keep the beer as bright as possible.

Final attenuation should be 82-84%.

He says that the quality of a pilsner is highly dependent on the hopping. Here is one pilsner hopping strategy he recommends in chapter 5. He divides the suggested hops into three groups:

Group A: perle (I imagine magnum would work well here too, but Narziss does not mention it)
Group B: tradition, mittelfruh, hersbrucker
Group C: saaz, saphir, select, tettnang

He also gives the amounts for each addition in terms of grams of alpha acid per hectoliter. You can convert this to grams of hops per liter of wort by dividing the given number by 100, then multiplying by the inverse of the alpha acid content of the hop. So for 10 g/hl using a 5% AA hop, you would want (10 / 100) * (1/.05) = 2 grams of hops per liter of wort. However, hop utilization may be different at large scale than small scale so it might be easier to just use the given numbers to figure out the relative sizes of your hop additions and then scale them all up or down to hit your bitterness target.

It is not completely clear to me what the wort volume reference is - pre-boil volume or post-boil volume. Commercial breweries have much smaller boiloff rates than homebrewers so it is probably less of an issue at scale, but this could be another reason to just use the numbers here as relative amounts and scale to hit an IBU target.

6 g/hl of AA at 60 minutes using group A (perle) or half and half hops from group A and either B or C.
3 g/hl of AA at 30 minutes using hops from group B
3 g/hl of AA at 10 minutes using hops from group C

[Roachbrau]

I remember seeing a chart done by Kai where he detailed several hop schedules for different styles, with the same A, B, C hop categories. Narziß must have been where he pulled it from, cool!

[Cavpilot2000]

Doesn't a pH of 5.5 in the mash seem a bit high? I would expect a lower mash pH for Pils (I use 5.2 after SMB's contribution). Far be it from me to question Narziss, but I wonder if that is a little dated by current science and practice?

[caedus]

I seem to remember a few commentaries on how a pH of 5.4-5.5 was more traditional in Bavarian breweries, and Narziss recommended it. However, Kunze was looking at a technologies book with further reaching implications (Belgian, Danish, American macrolageries too) and recommended 5.2 for its anti-LOX benefits.

Could be wrong.

[Weizenberg]

[Cavpilot2000]

[Techbrau]

Broadly speaking there are two approaches for pH adjustment during mash and boil when using biological acidification:

1) Mash higher (5.4), adjust to 5.0-5.1 at the end of the boil

2) Mash lower (5.2), adjust to 5.0-5.1 at the end of the boil

The advantages of 1) are slightly faster alpha amylase activity, better hot break formation at the beginning of the boil (larger chunks), increased hop utilization during the boil, faster DMS evaporation during the boil, and the ability to employ a larger sauergut dose at the end of the boil, since you'll need a significant amount to drop to 5.0-5.1. Mashing at 5.4 may also result in a fuller bodied beer. The disadvantages of 1) are that the redox potential may be slightly worse due to the oxidizing enzymes present in the malt being less active at 5.2 than 5.4, and also that the hop bitterness from a higher boil pH is supposedly "harsher".

The main advantages of 2) are that the redox potential of the mash may be better (for the reasons above), the final zinc content of the cast out wort may be higher (due to the fact that sauergut helps extract more zinc from the grist) which may lead to improved foam and fermentation performance, and the hop bitterness extracted during the boil may be "smoother". Mashing at 5.2 may result in a thinner bodied beer as well. The disadvantages are that hot break formation is more powdery, hop utilization is lower, DMS evaporation is slower, alpha amylase activity is slower, and you don't get to use much sauergut at the end of the boil because you are looking at dropping maybe 0.1 at the most.

The most important difference between the two approaches from a flavor standpoint is the size of the end-of-boil sauergut addition. More of the "sauergut flavor" carries over into the final beer from the end-of-boil addition than the mash addition - kind of like how late hops impart more flavor than bittering hops, whose flavor tends to get cooked out. As far as the rest of the differences, I think they're slight - not anywhere near as huge as the difference between acidifying to 5.2-5.4 and not doing any acidification at all.

You might think that you could get away with acidifying the mash to 5.2, and going below 5.0 at the end of the boil - but I think the issue when you start dropping to 4.7-4.8 is the fact that cold break formation suffers.

[caedus]

Great reply, thanks techbrau

[Cavpilot2000]

Now THAT is an explanation I can get behind!
Thanks brother!

[Weizenberg]

When you read the books, many examples sport tables with values of the results and grades given by a panel of testers evaluating sensory perception (blind testing).

So all this is not just humbug.

What is a lot of humbug however, is many of the stuff that is peddled to amateurs. I'm not ok with​ this since, as the world accurately describes -- amateurs do it for the love of it, we deserve better.

Professional literature is always a worthwhile investment. Initially I got tired translating German texts for the group and noticed that Kunze was actually available in English. It's interesting that some had to be really talked into buying it. The rest is --as they say-- history. Look at the impact this made over the last 32 months. It was one of the best recommendations I made in my 50 years on this planet. It's incredibly nice to see what people are up to once armed with that knowledge (and they keep pushing the boundaries further).

It's always a good idea investing in one's education.

Warren Buffett would agree.

Weizenberg's book collection.

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