Pilsner malt

There was a segment on Jace's introduction of the Berliner weisse style to the traditional American and German lager brewery. I need to go back an re-listen to that. I got distracted by something else and think I missed some points on his take on the style.

 

I have had no such experience with that yeast. We use it in our International-style Pils, BEER, and it finishes around 1.4P usually and is dry as a bone in that beer. Even in a Marzen that finished at 3.8P, we all feel it is fairly crisp. I've tried many other lager yeasts, and this is the one I keep coming back to and is the yeast that the vast majority of my favorite lagers are brewed with.

That being said, we are talking about one of the more finicky yeasts on the planet. Don't treat her right and you'll have SO2 through the roof. Crash the beer to early and you'll have diacetyl in spades. Many production breweries, including ours have the ability to not only pitch a very definitive cell count to their wort, but to also pinpoint O2 and FAN levels in the wort, pinpoint fermentation temperatures based on current gravity levels, and then check for diacetyl through UV light spec before crashing the beer. I would never want to use this yeast in a home brewery myself. It's a pain in the ass in a brewery with all the bells and whistles.

 

Jeff, the lager yeast I use the most in my home brewery is Wyeast 2124. I use it to brew my Classic American Pilsners and Bohemian Pilsners. I have been using this yeast strain for over 15 years and many batches and I have never experienced any issues. I have never taken any special measures when using this yeast.

I personally have no compunction in recommending Wyeast 2124 to other homebrewers. I have no comment as regards the White Labs equivalent of 2124.

Cheers!

 

Full disclosure, I was fine at brewing IPAs, Saisons, Stouts and such at home. Never was able to brew a good lager for shit.

 

My first lager was a Bohemian Pilsner (in 1998 using Wyeast 2278) and it turned out very good. I submitted it to a local homebrew contest and got a score of 31. Over the past 19 years my homebrewed lagers have improved. A friend of mine who has been brewing for a couple years has started to think about brewing lager and I expressed my opinion that brewing lagers is not necessarily hard but it does involve more in the way of process (e.g., more steps) so in practice there are more 'opportunities' for things to go wrong. I then further expressed my opinion that the characteristics needed here are:

• The ability to have attention to detail
• Patience

He is still thinking upon this and suppose I will find out if he is willing to take the plunge in brewing lagers.

Cheers!

 

Likewise, I also have had no issues with the Wyeast 2124 yeast, which I have now used several times. I brewed various pilsners for years, and have never cold-crashed them, but instead lower the temperature gradually, a few degrees per day, after a thorough diacetyl rest.

All of my previous pilsners were using the Wyeast 2278 strain, and I always found the result fairly consistent - dry and crisp, with little "body feel". I had become so accustomed to the results of my pilsners using Wyeast 2278, that when I started using 2124, I immediately noticed the significant difference. Compared to the results of using Wyeast 2278, the Wyeast 2124 definitely resulted in perceptions of sweetness, and "body feel", magnifying the tastes of the specialty malt (melanoidin or Vienna, both of which contain melanoidin). It was also less "crisp", although still enjoyable in a different way. Neither left any perceptible diacetyl tastes. This difference was also noticeably perceived by a fellow homebrewer, who has been brewing quite regularly for a long time.

As a result, I have had to modify my brewing procedure when using the Wyeast 2124. I use less specialty malt, and I mash at a lower temperature.

One thing I should add, is that the pilsner brewed with the Wyeast 2124 does tend to lose some of the perceived sense of sweetness and body when it has been lagered for a relatively longer period of time.

 

Maybe not as in depth as you'd like, but Greg Doss from Wyeast tested the attenuation of each regular Wyeast strain and you can read the presentation on the AHA web site if you are a member. The same set of trials tested the effects of mash length, mash temp, and grain type on attenuation.

ETA: The unfermentables left by any ale strain are various amounts of maltotriose (depending on the strain) and all of any "higher" sugar/dextrin found in beer wort. I can't point offhand to any studies about the higher unfermentables, but Sach c. doesn't make the transport mechanisms to bring them into the cell, so the strain shouldn't matter in that respect.

 

Thank you. I'm no longer a member of AHA, but I found a PDF of the report: http://www.homebrewersassociation.o...pdf/2012/1616-04 Attenuation - Gregg Doss.pdf

 

I checked the Wyeast website, and the odd thing is that Wyeast 2124 has a higher attenuation rate (73-77%) than does Wyeast 2278 (70-74%). I would have expected the exact opposite.

 

I wouldn't put much weight on any attenuation ranges published on the manufacturers' websites. They lack context. What grain bills (wort fermentability) and mash conditions is any given range intended to cover? Nobody knows.

In this case however, Doss' experimental data does support 2124 being a higher attenuator than 2278. Have you used both under identical circumstances and compared attenuation rates?

 

Not scientifically identical, but close enough for comparison. Both were a Bohemian Pilsner.

WY 2278: O.G. 1.052 F.G. 1.007
WY 2124: O.G. 1.053 F.G. 1.008

Attenuation was virtually identical.

 

Any idea of the chemical responsible?

 

I like the maltotriose angle that was given by @pweis909 as I would think that sweetness could be not only a characteristic of enzymatic activity, as in which carbon sources the yeast can metabolize, but a function of esterase enzyme activity as well.

 

I don't but I know I only pick it on packaged product (bottles, cans to a lesser extent) here and not "in country".

 

Kunze in his latest goes into detail about it.

 

Many saison strains, at least the ones that are var. diastaticus, can, and that's why they get the type of attenuation that they do.

 

I guess I should have said "Sach c. c." instead of "Sach c." I've always thought of diastaticus as a separate species, though a little googling just now indicates a shift toward lumping rather than splitting.

 

And neither of these affect the Final Gravity?

 

Esterase activity? No. Carbon source utilization? Maybe. You can, and do, have worts of the same terminal gravity with different sugar molecules making them up and some sugars are perceived as sweeter than others.

 

Thanks - that could explain it then.