Last year was the first time we brewed our Spring seasonal Pilsener. When it came out, I made the statement that I thought it was the best beer we'd made. I still believe that even though we have improved our processes and techniques, that the Pils is the best beer we have in our portfolio.
It was funny when we released it a year ago, we had no clue how popular it would be. We had concerns that too many people would see "Pilsener" and be reminded of Lite American "Triple Hops Brewed" beers... The thought was that craft beer drinkers would pass over it thinking it was supposed to be a light beer and light beer drinkers would complain that it was too hoppy.
To combat the lite beer conception, we made sure that we always referred to it as "German Style Pilsener" and then we tried to stress that we used all German ingredients and that the concept for the beer came from Augustiner's Pils. We used a hop schedule very similar to Augustiner, which is a fairly unique schedule in which all the hops are added in the whirlpool... It is essentially a hopbursted Pils recipe, instead of the more common technique used by Germans where they have a bittering addition and two flavor additions. When I first had the Augustiner Pils in Germany, I couldn't believe how much fresher the beer tasted than all the other Pilseners I drank in Germany. The hops came through with a little bit of a spicy, grassy, and lemony flavor.
My only complaint with the beer was that the hop flavor felt incomplete without a little bit of bitterness. That's a fairly common trait of German noble hop varieties, so when I developed the Pils recipe last year, I did have a very small bittering addition of about 5 IBU's. The other 28 IBU's comes only from a whirlpool addition of a blend of hops from the Hallertauer region of Germany.
A lot of people seem to remember that we insisted on using a specific type of Pils malt that wasn't available through our supplier, but we felt strongly enough about it that we spent almost $4,000 just for the shipping of the malts (Normally for the same amount of malt, our shipping cost would be closer to $300). We bought all that we could of the Pils malt and it only allowed us to brew 180 barrels of the beer. This year, we ordered a full truckload of malts from Weyermann and we will be able to brew either 360 or 420 barrels, plus 60 barrels of an Imperial Pilsener to follow in late Spring.
The funny thing about how happy I was with the beer last year though, was that it wasn't actually the recipe that I really wanted to brew. I wanted to use Hallertau Mittlefreu hops, but they are not widely grown and we could not find any available. I ended up settling on a blend that included a Mittlefreu substitute, Hallertau Tradition. Even with settling on other hops, we had to order some hops last year that were two years old due to low availability. Knowing that it would be a problem when we needed to brew more this year, I went ahead and got all the hops that we thought we would need on contract for this year's batches. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate however, we got word that Germany's hops had a terrible yield this year and our contract for next year was rejected. It doesn't impact this year's hops, but we knew we would need to do some experimentation to come up with a good substitute for next year.
Funnily enough, a friend at a hop supplier called me and told me that he would let us contract for the original hops that I wanted to use last year and that he could also get us the Mittlefreu for experimentation for this year. So while we are brewing the same recipe as last year, we also are getting to experiment with what would have been the original recipe so that we can work out next year's beer without any dip in quality. I actually anticipate liking the Mittlefreu version a little bit better, especially since the hop supplier uses a low temperature pelletizer which allows more hop oils to be retained in the pellets, which means an even fresher flavor which more closely resembles whole leaf hops. The flavor of the different hop varieties will be very similar to the original, and it actually may not even be noticeable in a blind taste test that the hops are different. That said, the experimental batch will not be released on its own and what will be shipped in bottles and draft will be the same as last year's recipe, but I probably will pull a keg or two for the taproom for those interested in trying it.
I think of all the beers that we have brewed recently, this is the one that I still look forward to the most. At the end of today, we will already have brewed the first 180 BBL of this year's Pils. In about 6 weeks, I fully anticipate my personal productivity level to take a severe nosedive. Prost!
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