We thought it was about time to have another go at a light refreshing pilsner style beer, have a complete departure from our current styles and a chance play with another new yeast.
So we got ourselves organised, a special bottom fermenting yeast was ordered. We took a trip to the hop merchants in Worcestershire to choose the finest continental noble hop varieties and then select what we felt were the best batches from each variety. We settled on Saaz and Perle from the continent in the end. A visit to Bairds maltings down the road confirmed that our beautiful English two row barley was indeed malted with the German Wanderhaufen batch system and is supplied to other world class lager makers as Pilsner Malt. Richard, our head brewer, checked out the water analysis and we are lucky that the mineral content of our water is very similar to that used for European pilsners so for this special brew we mashed in without burtonising the water. We mashed a couple of weeks ago, we have had a lovely cool fermentation for nearly ten days and we have just casked the beer up today. There is a very distinctive pilsner aroma and flavour already as we taste the beer straight from fermenter. Now we just have to let it sit and condition in casks in the cold room.

The aim with this brew is to test out the hopping and yeast flavours and we shall just serve it in cask at the moment. The next brew may find its way into bottles and keg.