For the last week, all I've been thinking about is how to follow up with our huge success of our last two new seasonal beers. Starting with the Oktoberfest, it seems that our customers liked having an easy drinking, German style beer that featured high quality German ingredients. At the time, it became one of our fastest selling beers in the brewery's short history. Although the beer was very popular, I was really happy to get away from brewing German styles this winter because ever since finishing school, a majority of my new recipes had been German or Belgian influenced beers. I felt like I was working myself into a box as being known as the guy brewing German beers.
It was a lot of fun for me to come up with an English style porter and go in a new direction. In the past, I think as a brewer I had always leaned towards styles that are heavy on hops or heavy with yeast characteristics... Pale Ales, IPA's, Saisons, high gravity Belgians, etc. When I did brew malty beers, I tended to use the typical American malts that were easy to come by and I was never very happy with the results. With our chocolate oatmeal porter, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could brew a malty beer. The porter featured very high quality English malts, including a fairly rare Oat Malt which gives significantly more oat flavor than flaked oats. The porter has been a huge success for us and recently became our highest rated beer on BeerAdvocate.com. While that has been very encouraging, it definitely puts the pressure on to come up with the next big seasonal.
So after making Spare Pair a year round beer, we are now looking for our next Spring seasonal recipe. We have settled on a German Style Pilsener. I was originally happy to get away from the German styles, but now that I've had a break, I am really looking forward to this Pils. The idea of brewing a Pils is appealing for a lot of reasons, but selfishly, I am looking forward to the challenge. It might be hard for a lot of beer geeks to understand why a Pilsener would be so exciting for a brewer... The real reason is because it is very difficult to brew a good one and a good Pils is something to cherish. This is the beer that keeps me awake at night, stressed out hoping that I am making the right decisions. To brew something that is perfectly balanced with a mellow malt backbone balanced with delicate hops, requiring a perfect fermentation to achieve that clean, crisp taste, all of which requires very soft water and a gentle boil to achieve the light straw color typical of a Pils is extremely challenging. So what goes into designing this Pilsner to live up to the challenge?
First, I think of the ideal beer and I think of the main qualities: Appearance, Aroma, Taste, and Mouthfeel. For the appearance, I want the beer to be as light colored as possible with a fluffy, long lasting, white head. So to narrow that down specifically, I think of all the things that influence the beer's color... Malt selection, Water Chemistry, Length of Boil, and Vigor of Boil. Then, I think of the things that influence head retention... Residual sugars, High Molecular Proteins, and Water Chemistry. That makes me realize that I need the lightest color Pilsen Malt available with a high ratio of High Molecular Proteins. For the malt, I will definitely be needing to order malt from a German maltster to get the exact specifications for a Pilsener. I also need soft water (luckily, we already have soft water in Madison, so the only real treatment we will use is an active carbon filter) with a low pH level and to maintain a boil that will drive off volatile compounds, but is not so vigorous or lengthy to induce Maillard Reactions.
Next, I think of the aroma of a good Pils. Obviously, some of the aroma will come from the Pils Malt. That is where the straw, or hay aromas come from. Personally though, I like a spicy aroma from the use of traditional German Noble hops along with a touch of citrus zest. For this particular beer, a blend of Noble hops will be used with the showcase being German Hallertau hops. The flavor should be a blend of hay, spicy hops, citrus, and herbal flavors with a really clean, crisp finish with no lingering aftertaste. So using that thought process, I know that I will need to have very strict quality assurance of all of my ingredients (and particularly the hops) when they arrive and I will need to pay close attention to the fermentation. We will use yeast from a well-known brewery from Munich which will provide a little bit more unique of a fermentation characteristic than is typical for a Pils (Munich breweries are known much more for Helles than Pils), but is still very clean fermenting and leaves a very crisp mouthfeel.
I still haven't decided on a final recipe and I doubt I will for at least another two weeks (I'm pretty indecisive when it comes to this type of recipe because of how every little factor can influence other parts of the beer) but I am very excited to continue to work on this beer and I will give a write up of the recipe when I am done!
I like it.
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