Ale vs Lager

Northern Brewer General
21

[quote=“dobe12”]To me, this appears to be a basic American or English Brown Ale.
I think that fits about as well as my underhopped ESB example. This beer clocked in at only 7 SRM, hardly a brown, haha. I like your points though. I could certainly tweek this recipe to get a more desireable product. What I’m really interested in is definining those tweeks. For example, you mention replacing the 2-row with pils malt if I were to change it to a lager. Why exactly?[/quote]

Basically it’s the standard base malt for most/all Pilsners and Lagers. Below will help describe why.

From Brew Dudes:

Pilsner malt is a base malt that can be made from 2 or 6 row malt. It gets its characteristics from the drying and curing steps in the malting process, where in the kiln the temperatures are kept lower in comparison to other malts’ productions. The kiln is also well ventilated in Pilsner malt production so it dries out quickly. The malt is cured at lower temperatures too.

What is produced is a very light-colored, highly-modified malt with excellent glucan and protein levels.

Pilsner malt seems to be produced in a number of different countries including Germany, Belgium, The UK, and the US. Without doing an experiment, my guess is that each area produces something that is similar but a little bit different…probably not much different though.

It be used at up to 100% of total grist since its diastatic power tends to be over 100° Lintner (which is the measure of the malt’s ability to break down starch to sugar)

Some suggest a protein rest during the mashing of this malt, but others state that it should produce an excellent wort with a single infusion procedure.

It is recommended to boil your wort for 90 minutes when using Pilsner malt. If your grist has over 50% Pilsner malt in it, then you should plan for a longer boil to combat the production of DMS. DMS is Dimethyl Sulfide and it produces a cooked vegetable/corn aroma in your beer. Not good. Boil for 90 minutes and cool your wort down quickly to stave off DMS as much as possible.

More stats:

Flavor: Ferments clean, some grainy notes

Color:1.4 to 1.9° lovibond

Body: Good body and mouthfeel

Use: All lagers, but especially pilsners. Belgian beers work too.

22

Lagers seem much less intense to me than ales. Ales have a robust complex flavor profile whereas lagers seem to be mellow and malty. I think in regards to forming a recipe to be an ale or a lager, you have to decide if you want a true lager? If so, your recipe design as mentioned previously is going to be simple. Pilsner malt with maybe one other malt for color or flavor. One type of hops and then of course lager yeast and lagering. I see lagers and ales like steaks. You can make your steak with salt and pepper(lets say that a simple lager) or you can throw on paprika,thyme, rosemary or what ever you want to play with(we’ll call that a complex Ale)

My 2 cents anyway.

23

[quote=“dobe12”]
…This conversation is a little confusing because you say you want a India Pale Lager, but there is not such beer that I know of [/quote]

There is such a beer…if you brew one and call it that.
Sorry…just a ‘devil’s advocate’ moment there. It’s no big secret that I’m not a big cheerleader for ‘style’ rules. :mrgreen:

Seriously though, I did actually see a commercial example of that very thing (India Pale Lager) in the liquor store just a day or two ago. The name escapes me at the moment (there was such a dizzying array of beers in the coolers that I went home with Yuengling Porter) but if I go back to that store in the next couple of days I’ll make a note of that “IPL” I saw.

When you consider that many commercial ales have been brewed with lager yeasts, and one very significant and best selling commercial ‘lager’ was actually brewed for years with an ale yeast, nothing seems very far fetched.
With grainbill, temperature, and hop schedule manipulations (and aging) you can achieve just about anything with some experimentation.