Central Experimental Pilsner

It took us about two years but we finally got around to it. Two Bays has finally made a lager.

© John Harrison 1982

There are a few reasons why we’ve held off on making a pilsner.  You need generally cool temperatures, which we have plenty of in Ottawa, but not at all in the summer which is when a good deal of brewing takes place.  You need patience, which we don’t have a tonne of.  And, until nowI think that we just figured ales were easier, so why not stick to what we know.

I also feel that that cool, crisp, clear characteristics of lagers have been taken too far.  When I think of beers like Kingfisher and Asahi, I figure that they go well with their respective cuisines but are pretty thin on flavour.  Same with my hometown favourite, Labatt Crystal.  It may be cool and clear but it’s not as great tasting a beer as the marketers would have you believe.

Then again, there are some of those stronger and darker lagers that are nothing short of fantastic.  I think the only Marzen I’ve ever had is Beau’s Night Marzen which has created memories when that shouldn’t have been possible.  And Creemore’s Urbock is one of the first signs that winter is just around the corner.

For our first lager we decided to go with a classic pilsner, with only minor variations.  This was largely motivated by the fact that we had a tub of extra light liquid malt that we wanted to use up.  We also hadn’t brewed with Saaz hops in a while and felt it was time to not only use them, but to use them properly.  As far as I can tell, if you’re not using Saaz, you’re not making a pilsner.

The recipe was basically 1lb Pils malt steeped for 20-3o mins with 6-7 lbs extra light extract and a 60 minute boil time.  Despite having held onto it for awhile, I did lose the hop schedule but I believe it was: 1oz cascade @ 60,  1 oz willamette @ 30, .5oz Saaz @ 15, 10, 5 and 2.  We used Safbrew’s Saflager S-23 or something like that for the yeast.

Now, we didn’t really pay attention to fermentation times or “diacetyl rest.”  The quality of the lagering itself could be compromised within this period, but at this point Jon seems to be confident we’re on track and I’ll take his word for it.  Ten days were spent in the primary before being moved to the secondary and to the cold(er) room.  Early reports from Jon indicate that this is the best beer we’ve ever made.  That’s really good news!  Let’s just hope that that keeps up.

Oh, and as for the name, it comes from the fact that a) we were experimenting with our first lager and b) Jon lives really close to the Experimental Farm.  At one point while we were brewing we could see  a really fat groundhog scrabble across the snow in the farm.  It was amusing at the time.  In retrospect, I’m sorry you had to read that.

Photo by Xiaozhuli