EPISODE S.4, E.17

Heather (00:09):
Welcome back to another episode of the BrewDeck podcast. I am your host, Heather Jared, joined by Cheyenne Weisshar. Hi, Cheyenne.

Cheyenne (00:17):
Hello.

Heather (00:18):
I’ll also hear Adam Wilson pop in a little bit later as well as Toby Tucker. Today we are talking Pilsner and Pilsner Malts, which is such an awesome topic. Cheyenne, you brewed with the great Western Pilsner Malt in your brewing life.

Cheyenne (00:31):
Yes, I did. I brewed with it for about seven years, and it was a fantastic malt, and we will hear a little bit about it later, but I used it across the board for all of our beers. It’s a great base malt.

Heather (00:42):
Awesome. We are celebrating one year of the Euro-Pils, the Canada Malting Euro-Pils Malt being out on the market, so we really wanted to highlight all of the pils in our malts that we do have in our portfolio. We’ve got some super great guests today, so let’s just jump right in. We’ve got Blake Enemark, the head brewer at Tailgunner Brewing in Calgary, Alberta, and Jake Nelson, head brewer at Horse Thief Hollow in Chicago, Illinois. They’re going to talk to us about the different Pilsner Malts that they like to use in their brewery. Make sure to stick around at the end because we have another segment of Ask Abi where we get to ask our product manager, Abi Connor, any of those burning questions that you’ve got. We are now very lucky to be joined by Blake Blake Enemark. Did I do it? Did I say it correct?

Blake (01:28):
You did it.

Heather (01:29):
Awesome. Head brewer from Tailgunner Brewing in Calgary, Alberta. Welcome, Blake.

Blake (01:34):
Thanks for having me. It’s a big honor to be here.

Heather (01:36):
We are so excited to talk all things Pilsner Malt with you. Before we fully dive into any of that, can you just give everybody a bit of an intro, how you got into brewing, and then tell us a bit about Tailgunner?

Blake (01:49):
Sure. We’ve got lots of time. It’s a funny story, but-

Heather (01:53):
We got time. We got time.

Blake (01:54):
Yeah. I used to be a touring musician when I was in my early 20s, and in between times on the road, a buddy of mine worked at a liquor store in Victoria where I grew up, and it just so happened that this place had, I don’t know, hundreds of craft beers and growing up in Victoria, craft beers is part of the fabric of the city. Spin Acres is there, which has been open for I think 40 years next year and Phillips and Driftwood and all that stuff, so my parents would’ve brought growlers and stuff to picnics and all that kind of thing. It was always around. I never really drank a ton of beer when I was younger. Blue Box for me was when it was Blue Truck from Phillips. That was probably my choice-

Heather (02:44):
Oh my. That was a long time ago.

Blake (02:47):
And they used to do this IPA that had the Taj Mahal on it. I remember really liking that one front, so I was working at this liquor store, hundreds of beers. I didn’t really drink a ton of beer at all. My coworkers who have all become really close friends of mine, we would just cycle through all the beers and drink them together, and I remember hating IPAs the first time I had them thought that tasted like lawnmower clippings and definitely gravitated towards high alcohol stuff from the beginning, Imperial Stouts and all that. Then I got married pretty young. My wife got into grad school in Toronto, so we moved together in 2013 to Toronto, and I was about three quarters of my way through an English degree and I didn’t have any job prospects when she was in school, so I applied to every brewery in Toronto, which at that point there was like six, I think. Bellwoods had just opened and I really wanted to work at Steam Whistle and dropped off a couple resumes, but they never called me back.

(03:52)
And I actually ended up getting a phone call from Amsterdam Brewing in Toronto, and I started as a delivery driver delivering kegs, so I was 22 years old, ripping around downtown Toronto in a 15 passenger van hoofing kegs all over the city. It was a pretty good way to get to know the city well, and I still love driving around there because I know all the alleys and shortcuts and all that stuff, so it’s always fun to visit. I was looking for an opportunity to learn how to make beer, and funnily enough, one of my friends from back home at Phillips had a connection with Great Lakes in Toronto, and he passed my resume along to David Beaman, who was the first sales rep for Phillips, who was actually still working at Great Lakes and still a good friend of mine. David got me interview and I got hired to work in the retail store there just a few months after realizing that huffing kegs was going to be really hard on my back and not that brewings much easier.

(04:57)
So then I started at Great Lakes and I got to know Mike Lackey, who’s the brew master there, and every time he’d pass through the shop, I’d ask him questions, then he invited me to do a couple of brews on the pile system. Then the real thing that I think fast tracked my foot in the door was he got hurt playing hockey. Lackey’s notorious for as soon as the ODRs in Toronto are our open he’ll head down there with a case of Canuck and he’ll play shinny from sunup to sundown, so he was out playing hockey. He got hit in the ribs with a puck and they needed a young able-bodied person to come in and help, because at that time, I’m not sure what the output of Great Lakes was, but there was me and Lackey and Noel and Cali were the other two brewers. They have amazing histories that I could talk about for a long time, but there were four people running production for, it had to have been at least 20,000 hecs at that time, probably more.

Adam (05:55):
I was going to say that facility is huge for four of you to be doing it. That’s impressive.

Blake (06:00):
I didn’t realize it at the time. I was just a young buck and I was happy to work 12, 14 hour days and drink tons of beer. I was in my element for sure, but-

Adam (06:10):
Lack a bit like you?

Blake (06:11):
Yeah, we’re still in touch. We’re still good buddies. I see him every time I go back to Toronto. He’s honestly one of my favorite people. Every time I sit down and have a few drinks with that guy, I just think, “Man, I could just hang out with this dude forever.” He’s just so funny, so smart.

Adam (06:29):
I feel the same way every time I sit down with him as well.

Blake (06:32):
Right, so you’re in Toronto, so I’m sure all these names are familiar to you. We decided to move back. I was at Great Lakes for about three years and then my wife and I decided to move to Calgary just to be closer to family because my folks are in Victoria still and her family’s out here. We moved out here and I got hired at Last Best right away, which was pretty neat because I wasn’t really sure what I would do once I got here, but Phil Bryan got me a brewing job right away, which was awesome.

(07:05)
And during that time we fiddled a lot with brewing hazy IPAs. I think Tokyo Drift was one that we worked on there at that time, and I think that was one of the first hazy IPAs in the province. There might’ve been one or two before that maybe, but that was a really exciting time and he gave me a really long leash with that beer. We’d be playing with the water all the time and switching out the hops and everything until we found something that we liked. A lot of Canada Malting products went into that beer, and I think they still do.

Heather (07:34):
They still do.

Blake (07:35):
And then I had the opportunity to open a brewery called OT in the Barley Belt here in Calgary, and that was awesome. Carrie and Mike took a big chance on me and gave me a really long leash, and we got to brew all sorts of beers and a lot of lager beers and a lot of barrel-aged beers, which was pretty neat. I haven’t had the experience or the opportunity to work with Wood since I was there, but that was a really fun time. Got to make a lot of mistakes and a few successes along the way. Then I crossed paths with the Tailgunner guys, Kayla and Mike, and they basically showed me the space that they had here, which is in downtown Calgary. For those that haven’t visited here and drank beer too much, there’s not a ton of activity for breweries in downtown Calgary. I can think of maybe four or five. I don’t think there’s many more than that.

(08:24)
So the opportunity to work downtown, and immediately I just love Kayla Mikes so much. They’re amazing guys to work for. Amazing character, great reputation too. Every time I would mention them, their names, and I was asking around if I should come and work here. Everybody with a resounding, “Those guys are 10 out of 10.” The big thing for me though was I started really getting interested in lager beers, and we all agreed that we loved Pilsner Quel when we first met. Mike’s brother, Jeff is actually a water engineer, so we talked about putting an RO system in here, which we have, and we talked about getting a mash mixer, which we have for doing decoction mashes. I’ve been here for almost three and a half years.

(09:09)
This place was basically an empty cave full of studs. I was here when the floors were poured and we raided all the tanks, and I pulled all the wires for the seller control panel, and it really has been extremely tactile and hands-on getting this place up and off the ground. I feel really thankful, honestly. I think for some reason I’ve ended up in these spots with some really, really smart, talented brewers, and I’ve been given opportunities that, I don’t know if they’re around anymore, to be honest. The industry seems to have gotten a little bit tighter and harder to get into, so I don’t know. I feel really fortunate.

Adam (09:46):
All right, so let’s talk beer and let’s talk malts. What base malts are you using on a regular basis?

Blake (09:53):
Our big one for our Czech inspired beers, we actually have a Czech employee here right now and she’s corrected my pronunciation, so it’s the proceoth malt that comes from souffle. That’s our pretty much our go-to base malt for any of our Czech beers. Our flagship Czech Pale lager is Lyndon Stevenson, which is named after Mike’s grandfather. We go through a ton of that malt for that beer. We use it in our anniversary logger as well. That’s our Czech 10 Plato Pale Logger, and then we use it in our Czech Dark Logger Ajax as well. I’ve played with a lot of different Czech malts and that seems to be the one that has responded best to Decoction in our system, so that’s a big reason why I like that one and then for everything else, it’s all CMC, Superior Pils and Superior Pale.

(10:44)
The Malt School beer. I can’t remember if we were talking about this off the air or on the air, but that’s a hundred percent Superior Pils and the whole idea with that project and with Kyron getting you all involved was, as far as he knew, nobody had decoction that malt before, so that’s been a really cool experiment. I think the beer is tasting quite good and for our flagship Hazy Pale, Dave Dorothy, we Feather Superior Pils and Superior Pale Together. Those are probably the three malts that we use the most.

Adam (11:18):
Let’s follow up on that then. Why do you use Pilsner as a base malt as opposed to say a two row?

Blake (11:25):
You know what’s so funny? I think based on my travels in the industry, you can probably tell I’m pretty big into mentors. When I was living in Victoria, I remember reading a small blip on a forum, or maybe it was an interview with one of the Driftwood guys and they said that the base malt for Fat Tug, at that time, I don’t know if it is anymore, it was Superior Pilsen. That’s one of my all-time favorite beers. I was drinking beer when that beer came out and had a really special awakening with that beer, so like, oh-

Heather (12:00):
Who doesn’t love a good 7% West Coast beer? Can confirm it is still being made with Superior Pils.

Blake (12:05):
Not a secret, I don’t think.

Heather (12:08):
No, I don’t think it is.

Blake (12:12):
There’s a lot of, I don’t know, there was a little bit of me that’s like, “Well, it’s good enough for those guys. Maybe I can use it too.” But a big thing working at Great Lakes, it’s well known that they brew excellent hoppy beers. I couldn’t even tell you it was in the silo at that time. I was mostly working in the cellar. It was probably CMC two row would be my guess. I’m sure Adam, you could probably confirm or deny.

Adam (12:33):
Yes.

Blake (12:33):
But a big thing that I learned from Lackey was don’t mess with the hops too much. You want to have a really neutral malt base that really lets the hops poke through. Brew and Canuck, at that time it was a really simple beer. I think it still is, and I love, it’s dry hopped really lightly, but it’s such a really neutral malt base compared to other beers that were being brewed at that time.

(13:00)
I love Bone Shaker and I love that beer, and I worked at Amsterdam and it was the one they wouldn’t let us take home for our staff beers at that time, but that beer is a different kind of hoppy beer in the sense that it’s actually one that I kind of prefer now, but a really assertive malt structure and everything works, its synergy and it really does have a lot of balance to it, but a lot of the beer is at Great Lakes at that time where really, really hop forward. Keeping the malt profile neutral and simple, Superior Pils is a great fit for that.

Heather (13:32):
I think I always say that about Superior Pils and it’s just, it’s a beautiful blank canvas for you to work with. It’s just-

Blake (13:39):
Totally.

Heather (13:39):
Yeah. Perfect.

Blake (13:41):
The other thing for me with that malt is I did the malting course, I’ve done it twice. I think I did it once in 2016, and then maybe another time in 2019, I think it was the last time I did it. I remember the first time I did it in 2016, we got a little bit more technical and it’s like, “Okay, well the strain of barley.” Which I didn’t even know there were strains of barley is Copeland, which I believe is still is. Essentially my takeaway from knowing that Copeland was the malt or the barley strain in Superior Pilsen, it is essentially one of the highest grade malts that’s grown in Alberta. So it’s like, “Okay, well the price is attractive, the price to quality ratio is extremely attractive and it’s an excellent malt and I know that I can brew with it with confidence and knowing a bit more about the traceability and the history of the grain.” I don’t know, that really sealed it for me too.

Heather (14:30):
Well, and I always say, I have such a great territory to work with because I deal with Alberta. Well, this is where some of the best barley has grown in the world. You guys are so lucky to just be around and to have the knowledge and to be able to see it out your back door.

Blake (14:45):
And that’s what’s amazing about the molding course too, getting out and having a tactile experience with, like you said, some of the best barley in the world.

Heather (14:55):
It’s really, really cool. You also obviously are using the Czech Pilsner from souffle. What do you find the differences between a European style Pilsner Malt versus a North American style Pilsner Malt?

Blake (15:08):
That’s a great question. For me, I feel a little bit like a cultural appropriator for somebody that is excited about brewing European style beers and using European archaic brewing techniques. In my opinion, if we’re going to appropriate someone’s culture, we should probably be using their ingredients. My favorite way to put this is if you’re going to make a Neapolitan style pizza, you’re going to use double O flour, you’re going to use the nice DOP tomatoes, and that really is what takes your average pizza pie to something that has a little bit more sense of place and history to it.

(15:48)
From day one, we did use the Souffle Proceoth Malt, and it has such a unique character. For the first year that we were brewing here, we actually weren’t decocting our Czech pils, and I think the biggest thing that we saw was, I’m pretty sure that malt is slightly under modified. Maybe you have more insight than me, but we also have this really strange brewhouse where the geometry is really wacky. All of our brewing vessels are way taller than they are wide, so we have stuck mashes all the time. Anyway, everything was finishing really high before we were doing decoction, so when we were doing our Czech pale lager, it would finish at four Play-Doh, which is not out of spec for that style. I’m pretty sure Pilsner quails in that territory, but as soon as we started decoction mashing that beer, it was finishing at 2.5, 2.8, which to me drinks a lot lighter.

(16:45)
There’s so many reasons why I think people gravitate to dryer beer rather than sweeter beer for the most part, but that was probably the biggest takeaway.

Heather (16:53):
What do you see the differences in your final product when you’re using, is there difference in taste or color or anything in the full?

Blake (17:04):
I think it is really interesting, and I think that this beer that we’ve worked on together is a real, it’s experiment in a lot of ways, but it’s a real testament, I think, to the differences between the two nationalities of malt. I’ve always found the Superior Pils has, it can range from almost like marshmallow banana candy to banana bread and I noticed this at Last Best as well, when we’d be doing wash brews and Bryce would be distilling spirit out of that grain, that really was the strongest expression of that malts character I think for me. That’s something that’s always stuck with me, and it’s not in an off flavor way. I always forget the name of the banana off flavor. Not the one you want to have, but I sold him a, you guys should know, right?

(18:03)
But anyway, I feel like that expression of the malt when that malt is not decocted is a little bit more clear because when I was bringing OT, we would use Superior Pils for our flagship lager Bush League, and that’s a component of that beer I always really liked. It’s nice and simple it’s got some nice character, but it’s just a super clean, it’s a great lager malt. Then with the European malt, especially as we started venturing into doing decoction, the best flavor descriptor I can use is purple. I know it sounds crazy, but when we had the first batch of our triple decocted Czech pills and tank, we had a couple wine people come by and they independently use the tasting word purple, and I was like, “Oh man, that’s exactly what it is.” It tastes like that liquor made purple dip.I don’t really know how else to explain it, but it was a flavor I hadn’t experienced outside of having pils or a quel or a Godspeed beer before, so that was pretty neat.

(19:12)
That malt when it’s not decocted it definitely, it’s still super rustic. It’s like an old book or something like an old John Grisham book. I don’t know. It’s got this cellar, basementy rich, grassy character. I don’t know. I don’t know how esoteric you want me to get, so I’ll wind it up.

Adam (19:35):
I’ll just jump in here for a second. I see. I’ll acetate.

Blake (19:39):
Yeah. Okay, there we go. Yeah.

Cheyenne (19:41):
Someone hopped on Google.

Heather (19:41):
I was going to say Google it.

Blake (19:44):
I still don’t think I’ve been pronouncing diacetyl right for the last 12 years.

Cheyenne (19:47):
I haven’t pronounce diacetyl.

Blake (19:51):
Every once in a while I meet a scientist and it’s always diacetyl, but then you hear someone like Matt Brinson talk about it or something, and it’s like diacetyl. It’s like, “Oh, okay.”

Heather (20:01):
I call it diacetyl and I hope that we’re just going to keep it that way.

Cheyenne (20:04):
Yeah. I’m not ready to switch, for sure. Well, cool. I want to switch gears here a little bit. We’re talking about raw materials, we’re talking about the malts. I want to talk a little bit about the decoction mashing that you’re doing at Tailgunner, and so back up a little bit for our listeners. Can you tell us what is a decoction mash and what is it about the brewing process that differs from a standard brewing process?

Blake (20:26):
Yeah, so a decoction mash is taking a certain portion of your mash and removing it or sending it to another brewhouse vessel. For most people, you probably have a mash lauter and a kettle, so you got a two vessel brewhouse with HLT, so you’d have a third brewhouse vessel, which for us is a mash mixer. The way that it works here is, well, we always mash into the mash mixer and we’ll typically do a protein rest and then send the first two thirds over to the lauter ton and then the remaining third in the mash mixer, we’ll boil. There’s different schools of thought. Eventually I’d like to dive a little bit more into holding temperatures in the mash mixer instead of just sending it from whatever rest it’s at up to a hundred.

(21:14)
But we’ll boil that third and then send that over to the lauter ton. That’s the traditional Czech technique. Basically by removing a third and then sending it to the original two thirds, you pretty much can hit the most important temperature rests that you would need to have in the brewhouse. I think traditionally the first rest in proper Czech brewing is human body temp, which I’m an English major, I’m not a scientist. It’s what, 36 degrees? Something like that, so stick your hand in there. It feels like your body. It’s like, “Okay, we can move to the next one.”

(21:58)
But we’re able to send the mash back and forth between the mash mixer and the ladder ton, and we’ll boil it three times and try to hit our temperature rest, which that’s been the coolest thing. We’ve done probably dozens of decoction brews here. Now we actually switched everything over to decoction this year, so every single beer that comes with the Tailgunner is decocted either for 30 seconds or 20 minutes. Sorry. The most satisfying thing now that we’re in a bit more of a rhythm is I can basically, I know between which temperature rests how much volume to pull to the mash mixer, how long to boil it for, and then usually I come within 0.2 or 0.3 degrees when I send it back to lauter ton, which is, like I said, I’m not the most technical brewer in the world. Using that artsy side of my brain, it feels good to have a visual volume that equates to an actual temperature.

Cheyenne (22:54):
And can you tell us a little bit about what are the benefits of doing a decoction mash versus doing a single infusion or doing a step mash? Are there any flavor differences that you’re seeing in the beers?

Blake (23:06):
Yeah, to be honest, to me it’s not even in the same territory, especially for if you’re trying to brew… Well, for us, Czech beers is what I’m most passionate about, but a lot of German styles too, which we do rigorous decoction mashing on. The flavor benefit for me would be one of the biggest things. The other thing too, there’s a lot of Czech brewers that would say you can’t brew a proper Czech logger without decoction mashing. It’s a necessary component of brewing that style of beer, and that’s something, again, if I’m going to be a young Canadian dude trying to honor hundreds of years of history of Czech Brewing, doing it their way to me seemed like the only way, because I’d actually had never done decoction mashing before being at Tailgunner. We tried once at OT and it was like scooping buckets of grain and running it through a diaphragm pump, and it was a real pain. That’s what ignited my love for sure, but there’s the tradition that’s there to be honored.

(24:16)
The flavor, like I was saying, we get that purple character in the Czech pils, which I just absolutely love. It gets me every time. That’s also our simplest beer. It’s one malt and one hop, but it’s by far the most complex beer that we offer, I think. There’s the flavor benefit. We also… With some of the German inspired beers, we do a Kölsch that we did a collab last year with Brandon from Aveling, and we got a really nice snappy cracker malt profile that I think would’ve been there if it hadn’t been decocted, but it would’ve been a little bit more subdued. You get that with the German beer is a little bit more snappy and crackery, but the technical benefits for me are better head retention, better lacing in the glass, better foam stability.

(25:07)
For us, because our brewhouse is so wacky, getting lower, finishing gravity. We had a really hard time getting any beer below three Play-Doh before we were doing decoction and the Malt School Beer that we did, we did one batch of it already that we just packaged a couple of days ago. That finished at two Play-Doh, which for us is the dry high spirit we’ve ever seen, which is awesome, but I thought it needed a little bit more balance so we switched the mash schedule for the second batch, which is the one you’ll have if you come to malt school. That would finish 2.4, which I think is just the perfect spot for that beer. It’s having better attenuation, better foam stability and flavor for sure.

Cheyenne (25:54):
That’s so cool to hear, and it’s such an interesting process that not a lot of brewers are doing. You had mentioned the beer that you’re brewing for the malting course, the CMC malting course. Can you tell us a little bit about that beer? Are you using the CMC Pilsner?

Blake (26:08):
Yeah, it’s all superior Pilsen. Again, it’s really simple. It’s not really much different than our Czech Pale lager. It’s a hundred percent CMC pils and a little bit of neutral bittering, and then we finish it with some Czech sas, and then we use our house Czech logger yeast, and it gets spunded. And so all of our loggers are naturally carbonated here as well.

Cheyenne (26:32):
Oh, cool.

Blake (26:34):
That also helps with the foam positive protein.

Cheyenne (26:37):
It’s also much the traditional and technical brewing processes that you’re doing with the decoction mashing and the spunding. We did an episode about spunding, and it’s really interesting how much there is to it versus the traditional carbonating.

Blake (26:50):
And it’s interesting how different beers and yeast respond differently. Originally, we were using the boudvoir strain for our Czech beers, and as soon as we would spooned it, the pH would spike and then we switch to a different strain and it responds a lot better and that yeast is just rock solid under pressure. There was one more thing I wanted to touch on with the decoction stuff. Oh, we see faster fermentation and lower finishing pH as well. Not like a rip fermentation. It’s not like we’re fermenting logger in 36 hours, but definitely we had seen, I don’t know, 16 or 17 day fermentation to get to terminal and clear diacetyl rest before decoction, and now it’s for sure between 11 and 13 days.

Cheyenne (27:36):
Oh wow. That’s interesting.

Blake (27:39):
This is all just anecdotal. This is just my experience. I’m not sure what other people would say, but for us, I don’t think there’s any other way.

Cheyenne (27:50):
That’s very cool, and you said you’ve switched all of the beers that you’re making at Tailgunner, or all of them are doing a decoction mesh?

Blake (27:56):
Yeah, and basically for the reasons that we talked about earlier, we were seeing our beers finish really sweet, not great foam stability for a bit, and then as soon as we did decoction, we saw that go way up. Doing a, I was inspired by our other brewery here, Devin, he’s pretty deep into the forums and the podcasting world and stuff. I got a young family now, so I don’t have a ton of time for that anymore, but he turned me on to the Craft Beer and Brewing podcast with, there’s an episode with Eric Toff from Schönram in Germany, and he’s the brewer, the lager brewer’s brewer. He talked about how his house is a 30 second decoction, and I was like, “Man, that’s so badass.”

(28:42)
We tried that here with our IPAs and our hoppy beers because the idea is to rupture the cell walls and take it through every, temperature rest basically is between 50 and a hundred. Again, we saw not a lot of flavor contributions to the beer itself, which we don’t really want a purple flavor in our IPAs, but well actually, no, we did that 88 beer and it tasted pretty purple. The technical fermentation benefits, that’s the big reason why we switched it over to decoction. Again, that’s because we actually, we have the old Caravel system. They were a brewery here in Calgary, which went under right before COVID. I think that they would’ve been a CMC customer. I don’t know if anybody remembers that place, but-

Cheyenne (29:32):
I do.

Blake (29:34):
They came and went pretty quick, which is two bad because the beers were great.

Cheyenne (29:36):
The beers were actually really, really good.

Blake (29:40):
And they were the only brewery I think in the province that wasn’t brewing an IPA and I just thought that was really cool, but anyway, so when they went under, Kit went up to auction and we got it for a really good deal. Actually, in talking about all this decoction stuff, our system is actually, I was pretty intimidated by it when we got it. It’s a 30 Hec liter brewhouse with 60 HEC liter cellar vessels, so when you come down here and visit the brewery, you’ll see it’s just a sea of steel in a thousand square feet. We have four vessel brewhouse and eight cellar vessels in, I think it’s under a thousand square feet. It’s really tight. Basically, it’s not like I got to design a system and have a perfect decoction brewing system. It really has been a lot of changes made by necessity and what if we try this kind of thing, so it’s a journey.

Cheyenne (30:36):
That’s awesome, and that leads me into the next question that I wanted to throw at you. Decoction mashing, like we’re talking about, is so unique and so unusual. Do you have any advice for brewers who might be interested in trying a decoction mash? Is it something that you can do on a standard system? Do you have to have a specialized system to do it?

Blake (30:53):
Yeah, you could. I did it at OT. If you’re into scooping buckets of grain and possibly plugging up your pump. That’s the thing, everything we do here is so slow and I feel so fortunate because Kayla and Mike who own this place, they’re totally in it a hundred percent with me, where they know that we can only do one turn a day because we’re doing two or three decoctions. They know that, well they’re the ones that wanted to condition the beer for 60 or 90 days at a time, so that it really, it’s the three of us I think that make up the vision of what we’re doing here, but sorry to get back to your question. I don’t know how you would do it unless you have mash mixer, lauter ton or a mash kettle. Last Best could do it for sure. I’ve talked about this a lot with the guys there. They’d be able to do single decoction beers there for sure.

(31:52)
But maybe identify a brewery that does decoction mashing and go check it out and see if you can taste the difference in the beers or being in the tap room. It was, you got to be in for a long day. I brewed by myself here for a year when I was in between brewing staff and the first Czech pils brewed here I think was 16 hours, so I’d get here at-

Cheyenne (32:22):
Oh my God.

Blake (32:23):
I’d be getting here. I had a one and a half year old, I don’t don’t know how I did it, but I’d get here at five in the morning, I’d bike over and match with the first brew. I’d be here until whenever 16 hours is after that, and then go home, inhale dinner, sleep for six hours and come back and do it again. Those days are gone. Now Devin and I switch our shifts or we stagger our shifts, so I always do all the mashing and he always handles the boil and cast out and all that stuff and pitching the yeast and all that. We’re a perfect team. We wouldn’t be doing the kind of beer here that we’re doing if it wasn’t for him, so it really is teamwork on that front.

Cheyenne (33:06):
That’s awesome. If you want to do decoction mashing, you have to be willing to put in some very long days.

Blake (33:13):
That’s what I was getting at. I don’t know. I’m an analog kind of dude. Like I was saying, I used to play music and stuff. I still play a little bit and I like all the tactile cassette tapes and I got records at home and a lot of guitar effects pedals that are all analog and all that stuff. I’ve always been into vintage and analog, and not necessarily the fastest, easiest way with stuff. It really, I think it suits my personality because I’m not in a rush with any of this stuff and I just hope to keep doing it and keep learning more. It’s just amazing to see too. We were talking about how the beers before they were decocted, I don’t think they were very good, to be honest in retrospect. That was only two years ago, so I’m really excited to keep talking about this with people like yourselves and with colleagues and try to learn a thing or two, and maybe the beers will be better next year hopefully, and the year after that too.

Adam (34:16):
That’s really cool. You’ve more or less answered this throughout, but almost as a recap. How has your history of brewing pilsners evolved from when you started all those years ago to now?

Blake (34:33):
Oh, yeah. It was always fun. At Great Lakes would do, we had a few pilsners in the roster, a few lagers. I think Lackey’s still pretty into all the hoppy beers. I actually asked him point-blank if he still likes hoppy beers and he said yes, but we’d have some seasonal lagers for sure there and some small batch stuff too. They had a little one heck pile system. That’s where I think a lot of the core brands of Great Lakes were started on this little Frankenstein one heck pile system. It was my job for a bit to brew a new beer every week on that system, so we get Home Depot buckets full of yeast from Steam whistle. Erica would hook us up and we’d brew a hundred percent Cascade Pilsner, all pretty simple stuff. That would’ve been probably the first one that I remember doing 10 years ago or something like that. We would do them once in a while at Last Best. That was always super fun. In retrospect, I would’ve loved to have done some decoction on that system. Someone’s going to have to write a small book about that system because-

Heather (35:40):
The Last Best system?

Blake (35:41):
Yeah.

Heather (35:41):
Yeah.

Blake (35:43):
It’s crazy. You got to think about Brew Brothers before that and the fact that Doug chuchnita was brewing on that system when he was 18 years old and Keel Wilson, who probably has the most man-hours in a brewhouse ratioed against his age. There’s a lot of important beers that have come out of that building for sure. We brewed some pilsners there for sure and Last Best did have a lot of core beer, core lagers, the Dirty Bird black lager, and there was a Kölsch there for a while too, so I learned a bit there. That was my first time using a lot of European ingredients. Fills pretty big with the Tettnanger and Middle Fruit and all that stuff. I’d never used those before, but then OT, we had a core logger Bush League, which they still make and that beer I think still tastes great, and then up to what we’re doing here at Tailgunner.

(36:40)
It’s all a beer, right? If it tastes good, then that’s great. It doesn’t matter if it’s decoction mashed or how long it takes you to brew, but I think for me personally, the big thing we talked about when we were opening Tailgunner is how do you open a brewery? And we started brewing here in 2021. Prior to that we did a little bit of contract brewing, but how do you make a statement or a splash or tell people what you’re all about in this day and age if you’re brewing hazy IPAs and Fruity Kettle sours and all that stuff? And those beers, they’re all great and they have time and place and all that stuff, but I don’t know, I just didn’t know how we differentiate ourselves, if that’s what we were doing, so from the beginning we all decided we wanted to focus on lager brewing.

(37:25)
I think, my objective perspective, and I don’t know if this is accurate, maybe you would be able to say better than me, but I think that’s mostly what we’re known for. We get a lot of people that come here specifically to drink lager, and it seems like a lot of our peers, those are the beers from us that they get most excited about. I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s definitely been a journey for sure. I’m curious to see what kind of lager beers we’ll be making in 10 years.

Adam (37:57):
Me too.

Heather (37:58):
I’m excited for that actually. I’m really, really stoked. Like I said, I’m coming to town next week. I really can’t wait to try the Superior Pils and beer that you brewed up for the malting course. I’m really, really stoked on that. Just getting to see that beauty of a malt just to shine through. I think it’s going to be really fantastic. Well, awesome, Blake, thank you so much for joining us today and just talking all things awesome Pilsner Malts.

Blake (38:22):
What a pleasure. I hope it wasn’t too boring for everybody, but-

Heather (38:25):
Not even a little bit.

Blake (38:26):
You wouldn’t be listening to a podcast about decoction if you weren’t mildly invested.

Heather (38:32):
Precisely. We are now joined by Jake Nelson, head Brewer from Horse Thief Hollow in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome, Jake.

Jake (38:43):
Howdy.

Heather (38:43):
Thank you for coming on today and joining us to Talk Pilsner Malt. Before we fully dive into that, can you tell us a bit about yourself, how you got into the brewing industry, and then of course, tell us about Horse Thief Hollow and where that name came from, please.

Jake (38:57):
Yeah, for sure. I’m born and raised in Chicago down here on the south side where Horse Thief is, so this is actually my neighborhood for most of my life that we’re in. I was just a beer nerd, a beer fan, and when Horse Thief opened in 2013, I was super pumped to have a brew pub in the area. I came out, started drinking the beers, got to know the head brewer. I was in school for political science at the time and was doing that and expressed some interest that I wanted to learn what goes on in brewing. I’d never home-brewed or anything, so I started hanging out with our original head brewer, Dave, and eventually he hired me on as his assistant. That was in 2014, so that’s how I came to be at this company.

(40:00)
I’ve branched out and worked at a couple other companies before. Dave departed, and then they brought me back to take his place, so that’s how I ended up here. Like I said, Horse Thief opened in 2013. We are in the Beverly Neighborhood of Chicago, so down far south. The whole idea is, our motto is handcrafted from pin to plate, so we really have a small brewer system and take good pride in our kitchen and our beer and all that stuff and just really try to make the best products that we can. Keep our neighborhood and this section is Chicago full and make sure they’re not thirsty.

Cheyenne (40:50):
That’s awesome, and so speaking of the best products that you can possibly make, you have a beer called The Little Wing Pilsner, and so correct me if I’m wrong, in 2020 you won the bronze at the Great American Beer Festival for that beer and then you just recently this year in 2023, you took home the gold at the World Beer Cup. Is that correct?

Jake (41:10):
That’s correct.

Heather (41:11):
That’s amazing.

Cheyenne (41:12):
Well, huge congratulations.

Heather (41:12):
Congratulations.

Cheyenne (41:14):
It’s a huge accomplishment. Can you tell us about that beer?

Jake (41:17):
Well, thank you so much. It’s been really exciting and something you don’t really, it’s something you strive for, but it’s hard to imagine so to get that recognition is awesome, but really where the beer came from is we for a while as a group pub, small fermentation capacity, we’re needing an easy drinking beer that’s introductory to a lot of people who might not be craft beer nerds and we opened in 2013, so it was certainly growing a lot at that time, but it still had a lot of growing to do. We had a Kölsch, that was our number one seller, and we could get that out in two weeks and we loved that beer, but when we expanded our fermentation capacity a little bit, we were able to have a little more tank time, and that’s when it was time to do a lager and really perfect that.

(42:21)
The idea was just to make an easy drinking beer that was a approachable for people who may not be craft beer nerds and then also execute the style really well so that if you are a hardcore beer nerd, it’s still really enjoyable. Hopefully, I know a lot of brewers will use, a lot of beer drinkers in general will use your lager as a benchmark for your skill as a brewer, so it’s a way for us to hopefully show off that we know what we’re doing and make a really good, clean, easy drinking and it’s by far our number one seller here at the pub.

Cheyenne (43:02):
That’s great. It’s funny that you mentioned that about the skill that it takes to do lagers. When we were recording with our good friend Abi, she was saying that it totally is a benchmark. If you can go into a brewery and they have a really great lager or really great pilsner, you can trust all of the other beers are going to be really awesome as well. If you can perfect that traditional style beer, then you’re pretty good to go.

Jake (43:22):
Definitely. Definitely.

Cheyenne (43:23):
For sure, and so this one, the Little Wing Pilsner, that is an American style Pilsner, correct?

Jake (43:28):
Yeah, we’ve been called an American style pilsner, but there’s no corn or anything in it. It doesn’t really fit super nicely into any of those individual categories, but we brew it here and we use American Malt. For us, it’s an American pilsner but doesn’t adhere strictly to say the use of corn as the Brewer’s Association style guidelines would suggest.

Cheyenne (43:57):
Yeah, for sure.

Jake (43:57):
We actually entered it in the international pilsner category at the World Beer Cup and Great American Beer Fest.

Cheyenne (44:05):
That’s very cool, and so you’d said that as you were able to slow down a little bit and you weren’t having to rush through all of your beers as quickly, you were able to perfect this beer. Do you mind if I ask, how long does it take from brew day to glass to get this beer made?

Jake (44:20):
Well, a lot of times we can get it done in three weeks, but I really shoot for a good four or five weeks on it. When I’m really lucky, I can hold onto it for eight weeks and that’s ideal, but a lot of times we can make a great pilsner and put it out in three weeks, but four to five weeks is really my target.

Cheyenne (44:42):
For sure. Very cool. I’m going to back up a little bit just because I keep wanting, I want to shine the light on this gold medal win that you have here.

Jake (44:49):
Oh yeah.

Cheyenne (44:50):
Were you present at World Beer Cup or where were you when you learned that you won? Tell me about that experience.

Jake (44:58):
It’s funny, me and our other brewer, Morrison, we were there, we’re a two man brew team here. We were here just brewing, making work, and I honestly think I knew that morning that the awards were happening and then I just was distracted with my brew day, so I wasn’t at the awards, I didn’t watch the awards. Clocked out for my shift, and I left five minutes away from here so in between the time that I left here and clocked out and the time that I got home, I had 15, 20 text messages from my friends. They were all there, so they texted me right away. As soon as I saw all those text messages, I knew it was good news and then to open my phone and read gold for Little Wing, it’s really the close thing we have to a flagship if there is such a thing anymore. It was just a great feeling and immediately came right back here-

Cheyenne (46:12):
You got to celebrate.

Jake (46:12):
For a couple. Yes, absolutely.

Cheyenne (46:12):
It’s funny that you mentioned that, so I have a very good friend in the industry. Her name is Stacy, up here in Washington, and she’s a fantastic brewer. A couple of years ago she won Gold at World Beer Cup for one of her smoked beers. She said she had the same experience where she was brewing, she was working, she wasn’t really paying attention, she had to drive home for something, and she had a bunch of people who were texting her like, “Oh my God, have you seen this? You won.” And she had pulled right up into her driveway at that moment, and she had gotten out of her car and her ring camera caught her reading the messages and realizing that she won. She has a video of it, which I think is pretty. I’m sure it’s a phenomenal feeling, right?

Jake (46:45):
That’s great. Now I’m actually at the possibly superstitious phase where I don’t think I can ever watch or attended an award ceremony. I’ve watched and attended many and I’ve struck out at all of them, so what I’m doing right is not paying any attention.

Cheyenne (47:05):
That round worked.

Heather (47:07):
Just be in the brewery making beer and it’ll happen.

Jake (47:09):
For sure. Exactly. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Heather (47:11):
Yeah.

Cheyenne (47:11):
Yeah, for sure.

Heather (47:11):
Awesome.

Cheyenne (47:14):
And you said you use an American style pilsner in this one. Are you using the Great Western Pilsner in this one?

Jake (47:20):
That’s right. We are using the Great Western Superior Pils, I believe it’s called.

Cheyenne (47:25):
Awesome. Yeah.

Jake (47:29):
We trying to think. We were using European malt for a long time on that beer and when I came back to take over as head brewer here, I came from using American malts pretty exclusively. Coming back and then we were using German malt, which is fantastic, but I made the switch after probably less than a year and brought in American malts because really I think we make great malt here and I like to embrace just our domestic products. Same way I try to embrace our water profile to a degree. We do adjustments on there, but I’m not going to go crazy and try to replicate the water profile of another place. It was just something I believe in when I made the switch over, I really enjoyed it, and that’s nothing against the great German malt we were using, but it worked out perfectly and we’ve stuck with that for the last three years, plus years now.

Heather (48:55):
Could you tell us what differences you did see when you switched over to using the North American style Pilsner Malt versus the German style Pilsner Malt?

Jake (49:03):
The biggest thing initially was milling it. I had to adjust my mill gap because I found that the European malt has really got a good plump kernel and they actually, at least the stuff that I’ve got on my hands on, it’s a bigger kernel for our mill. We don’t have a great high-tech mill or anything, so the first few times I was sticking my masses, so I adjusted, I got our mill set, and that was the biggest thing for me. The flavor difference is certainly something that could be perceived, and it is subtle, but I just found it a great tasting Pilsner Malt and stuck with it.

Cheyenne (49:57):
And I got to ask, so I was looking at your website and looking at all the beers you have. You have a Kölsch style beer, which you had mentioned a little bit earlier. Do you use European style malts in that one or are you using American malts in that one?

Jake (50:06):
We’re using American malts for almost every beer now.

Cheyenne (50:09):
Nice.

Jake (50:10):
I’ve got a Belgian triple that we do, and we age it in pinot noir barrels.

Cheyenne (50:16):
Oh wow.

Jake (50:17):
That’s the only beer that I’ve stuck with. Our European, the Franco-Belges malts, and we got a gold at Folded for that. That’s really the main reason I’m still sticking with it. I don’t want to mess with it.

Cheyenne (50:36):
For sure. Once you wins something you don’t want to mess with it. Heather, that sounds like right up your alley, that type of beer.

Heather (50:41):
Well, yes, it does. I just got back from Belgium, so I’m very much stuck on the Belgium beers. I was just making a note to write to Tim Burke and ask him to pick me up some, “Dear Tim.”

Jake (50:53):
Yes. Tell him to come by. Actually, we’re going to put it in barrels shortly, so tell him to come by in about nine months and we’ll-

Heather (51:02):
Perfect.

Cheyenne (51:03):
Very cool. Well, to jump back into the Pilsner Malt talk here, so you’re utilizing the Great Western Malting Pilsner as your base malt. Can you talk to us a little bit about why you choose that malt, maybe flavor profile color, if you’re seeing any changes in your brewing process?

Jake (51:21):
Yeah, the flavor profile, it’s just super clean. It’s got a great grainy characteristic. Some of these things I’m saying are generally the textbook definition of Pilsner Malt, and I think that the Great Western Pilsner just hits all those notes for me. I love it and I’m confident in using it as a base in a lot of my beers too, beyond the Pilsner. I use some of it in one of our hoppy beers that I split with two row. It’s just super clean. I love it. It’s just got that multi grainy Pilsner Malt character.

Cheyenne (52:01):
Pilsners are pretty versatile. I am a brewer by trade and used to brew commercially, and we would use pilsners for pretty much all of our base malts and all of our beers. They’re great malts.

Jake (52:13):
And prior to coming back here, I worked at a place called Winery Beer Company. We were specializing in American interpretation of Belgian beer, but we used Pilsner as our standard based malt. That’s really where I learned to love Pilsner Malt and it became my favorite over Pale Ale or two row. When I started here it was Pale Ale Malt was the big standard base malt, and I’ve definitely shifted over towards Pilsner Malt. I just really prefer that graininess versus something a little more malty and bready and it gives you a really clean backbone to play off of.

Cheyenne (52:59):
Yeah, for sure. I’m looking at your menu online and I see that you have the American Blonde Ale because of the brave. That looks like it has a cool backstory. It says that it is brewed to support the Road Home program and support of veterans. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jake (53:19):
Yeah, it’s super cool. Our Brewer, Morrison, he is a United States Marine Corps veteran, and Horse Thief Hollows as an organization is very involved in a lot of our local, just organizations in general. We have, The Road Home has a connection to the neighborhood and through our ward office, so they run a lot of good stuff for PTSD Awareness month. We thought that this was a good time for Morrison to be able to get his first, this is his first recipe.

Cheyenne (53:57):
Oh, cool.

Jake (53:59):
Yeah, it’s a really cool thing and it’s something he’s really passionate about having served in the Marine Corps and to partner with the Rhode Home Foundation and to be able to help raise some money, a dollar from every pint goes directly to the organization. Morrison made a super drinkable blonde that he also wanted to be approachable for the everyday person. When we do things like that, the community around us always comes in and supports it and they’re happy that they can drink good beer and support a good cause at the same time.

Heather (54:47):
Yeah, absolutely. I do want to take a quick pivot because this is something that we recently launched, so this is not going to be a about Pilsner Malt, but we recently launched the Bag Recycling program out of our Chicago warehouse, and I know that you’re participating in that. Can you tell us a little bit about how that works for you, how it’s been?

Jake (55:07):
I love it. Unfortunately, these bags aren’t really, by the number they are recyclable, but I think there’s a lot of difficulties in the recycling facilities that we have to actually be able to handle and process. Even if we put them in a recycling container, they may have very open ending up in the trash for a while. I was really excited to read about this and immediately, as soon as it became available, started participating and it’s great. We’re a pretty small operation here, but we’re talking maybe 40 bags of malt to week here, but being able to divert that from the trash is pretty nice for us.

(55:59)
And it’s really simple. The instructions are just open up one of your bags to start with fully, and then you just stuff all your other bags in it, so works out on a good schedule where we’re close enough to your Chicago warehouse where we can drive there and we’re small enough so we just go there every week and pick up a pallet’s worth of malt and carry our empty bags back and drop them. It’s super easy and it’s making a noticeable difference even though we’re on a small scale, but in our refuse bins. I would be willing to bet that it’s going to save us some measurable amount of money on trash collection.

Heather (56:43):
Oh yeah, 100%. Not putting those in the big bins out back definitely will take down a lot of your garbage over time. That’s awesome.

Jake (56:52):
Even just to think about it over one year, it doesn’t look like a lot on a daily basis when you’re just tossing them malt bags, but really thinking about expanding. If we’re using a thousand malt bags in this however many month section, pile that up, that’s a lot of trash. It makes me feel a little better about the environmental impact of brewing because it is a concern that I have, and a lot of times it can feel a little helpless. That might not be the right word, but it’s just, what are you going to do about your malt bags? I don’t have capability of, we can’t have a silo here and we can’t even fit super sacks. Being able to help ease my mind on the environmental impact, even a little bit helps, so I appreciate that’s an option for us.

Heather (57:43):
It’s awesome that these recycling programs are starting to catch up with the brewing industry. Awesome. Well, before we wrap, I want to circle back to the name of your brewery. I don’t think we got that out of you.

Jake (57:57):
Oh yeah, I left that out.

Heather (57:59):
Is it a secret? Am I not allowed to know?

Jake (58:03):
It’s funny, and it’s actually if you come in here, maybe not anymore. For a while the story was on our coasters and our menus and stuff, but it’s a cool little tidbit of history being that where we are in Chicago, it’s the highest point in Chicago. About two miles away is actually the highest geographical point, but over here we are up on a ridge, and before Chicago had expanded out here, this was just all wooded areas. As the story goes, the horse thieves would come up here and hide in the woods and they could look out, being from the highest point here, they could look out and see if the local sheriffs or whatever it was, was coming after them, and then they could move through the cover of night. This area geographically was known at one point as Horse Thief Hollow, where we stand now.

Heather (59:10):
That’s great. I like a good name with some good history to it.

Jake (59:15):
It’s a little long and wordy, but we love it and it gets people’s curiosity going.

Heather (59:22):
Well, it’s hard to forget too. I feel like I’ll never forget the name of your brewery now.

Jake (59:27):
Awesome.

Heather (59:28):
Well, thank you so much, Jake. We’re very honored to have you come on and talk all things Pilsner Malt. We’re really excited to see you rocking that great western vest for that gold medal win too, so those should be coming out in the next couple of months, so make sure post a photo of it.

Jake (59:44):
Definitely. Thank you guys so much for having me on the chat and it’s been a blast and I love everything you guys do, so keep up the good work with the podcasts and everything.

Heather (59:56):
We’ll take it. Well, now we get to jump into one of my favorite new little segments we’ve been doing where Ask Abi where we get to ask Abi Connor some pretty awesome questions. We do put up a little poll on Instagram where you can write in and ask Abi some questions too, so make sure to take a look for that. But welcome Abi.

Abi (01:00:18):
Thank you.

Toby (01:00:19):
I’m doing a silent clap over here.

Heather (01:00:26):
And Abi’s cheering section, which is Toby.

Toby (01:00:28):
Yes.

Abi (01:00:31):
I love that. I love that. Thanks Toby.

Heather (01:00:33):
This episode we are talking about Pilsner Malts, so pretty great question. What product do you recommend for a German pilsner?

Abi (01:00:43):
I love this. I love that this is asked of me because German pilsners are my absolute favorite. It’s typically the first thing I look for when I go into a brewery if they have a traditional German lager. There are a couple here in Minnesota that I frequent quite often for that reason, so I absolutely love going to Bauhaus Brewing, they’re great, they specialize in German lagers. Arbiter, which is German for worker. They specialize in German lagers too. Utepils is another one that’s German. They have a lot of really good ones and I know that a lot of them do buy some of these malts that we’re going to talk about, so pull a plug in there. Anyway, we have a lot of choices in our portfolio when it comes to product for German pilsners, but first, let’s talk about grain. I’m sure that you all have already talked about a couple of these, but we-

Heather (01:01:45):
It’s our favorite topic.

Abi (01:01:48):
It is. Yes. I know we love to talk about malt, don’t we?

Heather (01:01:51):
We do.

Abi (01:01:53):
But the first few options here, the first one is a German bran, Best Malts. They have a really wonderful pils in malts that’s perfect for your traditional German pilsners, it’s full-bodied, multi-backbone, light color, so it’s just like chef’s kiss for pilsners, German lagers too. I am also head over heels, I think you’ve already heard me say this so many times before, but I love candid maltings Euro-Pils. Not only in my opinion, but in the words of a lot of our customers I’ve heard it’s highly comparable to those well-known German pils in their malts. The best part about this is that you get the quality and taste for just a fraction of the price, which I know money, we’re trying to keep conscious of what we’re spending. Give it a shot, let us know what you think. One thing to note about this is that if you are looking for more of that multi backbone or slightly breadyer German pils, you can always add just a stitch of biscuit to this. That’s one of my favorites.

(01:03:00)
And let’s see, hops, German pilsners are typically a bit chewier and hoppier than an American pilsner, so you get that happiness through and through in a German pill, through bittering and through aroma. There are a couple very traditional hops that we have that are typically used. The bitterness usually comes from holler toe and then Tettnanger, it’s usually the world pool for aroma. We have both of these in T90 form, so you could of course use other hops outside of these two, but for the sake of time, I’m just going to leave it at that. As for yeast, we have a really nice new yeast that you may not heard of yet. We just launched it back during CBC, and it’s a brand that’s well known in the distilling wine world. AB Biotech has created a new line of yeasts for brewers, and it’s exclusive to CMG, which is cool. The Pinnacle Pilsner yeast is super comparable to other bottom fermenting Saccharomyces yeast, but again, it’s cost-effective. Leave it in there and watch the magic happen. No leg fast diacetyl, great foam retention.

Toby (01:04:11):
I got to tell you, Abi, I’m so glad we have you on our team. It’s amazing the knowledge you have.

Abi (01:04:16):
Thank you.

Toby (01:04:17):
You should be doing our job. Terrible-

Cheyenne (01:04:20):
She really should. We should hire her as a full-time host as well.

Toby (01:04:29):
Next question that I think we’re going to chat about a little bit, and it’s personally something I was thinking about is a grain bill for good head retention in pilsners.

Abi (01:04:38):
I think we talked about this a couple episodes ago. I think it was a question that we got in our pH and proteins episode a while back, but you can get good head retention from yeast and hops and adjuncts. There are a lot of different ways that you can get great head retention, but that pH and protein can also come from your malts. This is how they factor into haze stability, mouth feel, that types of things. A couple of my favorites are chip malts, which undergoes a shorter germination period. It’s low in color, so it’s great for those lighter beers like a German pilsner or a pilsner in general.

(01:05:20)
You can use anywhere between five to 15% chit in your grain bill to assist in that foam stability. You can also use between five and 10% of flake barley in the place of chits. The only thing is I found that it affects the flavor a little bit. If that’s something that you don’t prefer, I would go with chit. Typically, I don’t want to divert too much from the base malts that I’m using, but you can use both of these with your base malts and specialty malts to help with that retention and stability.

Toby (01:05:52):
Abi, that’s another one that comes from Best Malts as well as well, right? The chip malt?

Abi (01:05:56):
Yep. Yep.

Toby (01:05:57):
Very good.

Cheyenne (01:06:00):
It’s cool that we got this question about head retention because when we were talking to Blake in our recording with him, he was mentioning that he does decoction mashing and how that helps with head retention as well. It’s really cool how all of the raw materials intersect with the brewing processes to give head retention or affect head retention, but is grain the main way that you’d recommend producing head retention in lighter beers like German pilsners?

Abi (01:06:25):
The thing is, if we’re talking about pilsners, those are clear beers and a lot of these malts also create haze in your beers because the proteins stabilize in your foam. They also stabilize haze in mouthfeel, so these are great. Adding grain for foam stability it’s really nice for a hazy IPA, something like that, that you’re trying to also add these other attributes to your beer. These aren’t really something that you want to add into a lager per se, so if you’re leaning solely on your grain bill to provide head retention, you’re going to have to follow finishing steps to clarify your beer, and you can do that with additives, extra steps in your laddering or using a centrifuge.

Toby (01:07:04):
Abi, that’s really good information and just absolutely a wealth of knowledge here. Something that wasn’t on the list, just curious on, we talked German pilsners, but what about American pilsners? If somebody wanted to stick with a North American option for a pilsner that they’re brewing?

Abi (01:07:24):
I would go with Canada Maltings, pils and malt. We’ve got a lot of different pils and malts in our portfolio that you can give a shot. I would go with more noble hops and not quite so chewy, because you’re looking for a really subtle flavor. You’re looking for a light color, but again, we’ve got so many things in our portfolio, they can give a shot.

Toby (01:07:48):
Absolutely. I think the Great Western pure Idaho is one that we’ve had in our portfolio for quite some time, is a really good option. Obviously it’s a different taste altogether than what you typically see out of your European or German malt, but it’s a really good option for somebody looking for an American pilsner, and that’s a great one as well.

Abi (01:08:12):
Yeah, definitely.

Cheyenne (01:08:13):
And to your point, Abi, we really do have a ton of pils and malts in our catalog, and I always love when I have customers who ask me, “So tell me about the pils and malts that you have.” And I’m like, “Do you have two hours?”

Abi (01:08:24):
Right, exactly. Everyone is just a little bit different. It’s just really depending on the flavor that you’re looking for. In the different region, we’ve got so much to offer and I always tell you guys, I tell our customers that I’m trying to constantly evolve our portfolio to match the needs of our customers, but this is one area where I feel like we’ve got a hefty amount of choices.

Cheyenne (01:08:49):
I agree.

Toby (01:08:51):
That’s right.

Heather (01:08:52):
Got the right Pilsner Malt for everybody.

Abi (01:08:54):
Definitely. Yeah.

Toby (01:08:55):
Well, Abi, thanks so much for joining us. Obviously great to have you on and happy to have you answer those very technical questions. For the listeners out there, if you’ve got some questions that you want us to relay over to Abi, send them our way.

Abi (01:09:12):
Thank you, I appreciate it. This is a lot of fun.

Heather (01:09:15):
And that is a wrap. Great big thank you to our guests, Blake and Jake. I do love saying that. If you have any product recommendations or technical questions you’d like for us to ask Abi and any of our upcoming episodes, make sure to email them to us at the brewdeck@countrymalt.com.

Cheyenne (01:09:33):
And don’t forget, the pre-orders are open for our six annual veterans blend. Those are open until August 28th. If you missed our last episode, go back and listen to it. We got to chat with a bunch of really awesome people in the industry, and we also chatted about the blend specs on that hop, so you can contact your sales rep to pre-order that hop. From all of us here at the BrewDeck Podcast, thank you for tuning in.

Heather (01:09:54):
Keep crushing it. Bye.