Brew Day – Backyard Pilsner

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Brewing Backyard Pilsner recipe from Adventures in Homebrewing. Recipe says “Gradually bring up to 150-160” like I have the option of doing it quickly…

Doing all of this for the first time, it’s a little disjointed – not having things ready when I need them or within easy reach when my hands are full. Anyway, it went smoothly, all things considered.

In preparation for this day, I had frozen some beer cans full of water, ready for the ice bath at the end of the boil. Turns out, don’t freeze cans. The expanding ice opens up a door in the side of the can, almost perfectly uniform across all of them.

Regardless, they worked well to cool down the wort. I tied some cord with a long twist tie to the end of my thermometer and hung it from the knob on the cabinet door above the sink.

The Original Gravity measured 1.040. The recipe projected 1.048.

I moved the fermenter down to the basement, since it is the coolest place in the house. Unfortunately, in the summer, it’s still 75° down there, which is near the top of the range for the Safale US-05 yeast.