Dawn of the Decoction: Kellerpils Brewday Grain to Glass

In this post-apocalyptic brewday, we attempt to brew the ultimate pilsner. To make this homebrew a bit more interesting, we added a decoction step to our usual hochkurz mash.

Kellerpils Homebrew Recipe -- 6 gallon batch

Water profile: Ca 56ppm, Mg 8ppm, Na 21ppm, So4 54ppm, Cl 46ppm

11# Avangard Pilsner Malt
Single Decoction Hochkurz Mash
Beta rest 144 for 45min, boil decoction for 15 minutes, alpha rest 160 45min

.5oz Perle First Wort Hops boil 90 min
1oz Hallertauer Mittelfruh boil 45 min
1oz Hallertauer Mittelfruh boil 20 min
1oz German Ariana boil 5 min

Imperial Harvest (L17) lager yeast
Ferment at 54 with a slow ramp to 68 for diacetyl rest
Fermented for 3 weeks, cold crashed to 40 for 3 days before bottling.

GLOSSARY
Kellerpils: A pilsner that has not undergone the traditional lagering phase of a standard pilsner. A favorite of impatient homebrewers.

Hochkurz mash: Literally "high short" mash. A two step mash with a beta amylase rest at 144 and an alpha amylase rest at 160. This promotes increased fermentability and body/foam/head retention.

Decoction: Removing approximately 1/3 of the thick mash and boiling it, then returning it to the rest of the mash to raise the entire mash to the next rest temperature. The more steps in your mash the more decoctions you do. Often combined with a protein rest, beta rest, alpha rest, and mash-out in a triple decoction. The process of boiling the thick mash can create melanoidens and will increase the perceived maltiness of the grains.

Chill Haze: A haze created by proteins and polyphenols that is only visible when the beer is chilled. It can be avoided by a combination of a protein rest, good hot and cold break to precipitate proteins, cold-crashing and then adding a fining agent such as gelatin or polyclar, extended lagering, or filtering. If we added gelatin during our cold crash it would have cleared it up, and we'll try it next time. Currently we "lagering" the beer in the bottles in the refrigerator for a more traditional pilsner look.

Pepper the Zombie: An old Halloween decoration that lives in the garage. He is a favorite of the Interrupter and makes his way into most of our videos.

EQUIPMENT USED
Spike Brewing kettles and Spike Flex Plus fermenter
Blichmann Hellfire burner and Blichmann beer gun

VIDEO EQUIPMENT
Panasonic GH5 10bit 422 HLG color profile
Lenses in this video: Laowa 7.5 F2, Pana-Leica 12-60 f2.8-4, Panasonic 25mm f1.7

Edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Film emulation with Film Convert Nitro
Music from Epidemic Sound