One of my favourite Australian beers on my last couple of trips home has been the James Squire Pilsener, made by the Malt Shovel Brewing Company. It’s super easy drinking and very tasty example of a pilsener. Its more or less a Czech pilsener (a Bohemian style); a little meatier (or maltier if you will) than your traditional pils – think less Miller Lite type pils and more like a Pilsner Urquell or a Sierra Nevada Summerfest. Since Brent and I have only been brewing ales up till now, I decided that is was time to take a crack at lagering something; I mean we have the kegerator, why not put it to use for more than just the kegs?!

We came up with a name for him, even before I brewed it; Jimmy Page – James Squire’s fictional little bro’. I hope Chuck Hahn (Malt Shovel’s Brewmaster)doesn’t mind that I created family for James

There wasn’t much help out there in terms of clone recipes, so I had to kind of fly by the seat of my pants a bit creating this 5 gallon recipe…

9lb Pilsener Malt
10oz Weyermann Carahell
6 oz Melanoidin Malt
0.75oz Riwaka(NZ) hops (60 minutes)
0.5oz Nelson Sauvin(NZ) hops (30 minutes)
0.25oz Riwaka(NZ) hops (5 minutes)
0.25oz Nelson Sauvin(NZ) hops (5 minutes)
Wyeast Bohemian Lager (2124) yeast

Lagering is a whole new ball game when it comes to fermenting; it requires serious temperature control, which ales for the most part do not. Ales are much more forgiving when it comes to tolerating heat, whereas lagers need to start out cold, come up a bit warmer right at the end of the fermentation, and then spend another 3-6 weeks cold again in order to have the lager characteristics. Complicated right? Thank god for John Palmer! He has written the best step-by-step, brewing for dummies-type guide; I could not have pulled this one off without his excellent assistance; maybe I need to list him as an “assistant brewer” on my competition entries!

So, I racked (moved) it to a secondary fermenter last week, but had made such a huge batch, that it didn’t all fit in the 5 gallon cornelius keg. Damn; so I had to bottle three tasters…horrible I know! Three that will be ready before the others, and we’ll get an idea of what to expect; albeit a little cloudier It smelled AMAZING! Really! Tropical fruits on the nose; banana /passionfruit /orange? Cool To any Aussies that are reading so far, it smells just like a Frosty Fruit! I tasted the uncarbonated beer, and it is biscuity/malty, but with a touch of light grapefruity citrus. I think that’s from the Nelson Sauvin hops, they smelt very Sauvignon Blanc-esque when I pitched them into the batch.

So I went to pop one open last night; 7 days into bottle conditioning is usually a little light, but I’m impatient and wanted a taste. I pulled out my favourite Dogfish Head pint glasses and slowly cracked the top of the 12oz bottle, hoping to hear the effervescent “pschhhht” that confirms I do indeed have carbonated beer. I hear it (yay!) and breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t just waste a bottle of beer because I was impatient! Except….then comes the fountain. There was beer spewing out everywhere; all over Brent’s freshly cleaned floor Sorry hun! I guess seeing that this was the beer that came out of the very bottom of the primary fermentation container, that it has a bit too much of the leftover yeast cake in it, and went crazy eating the sugar I put in for carbonation. Note to self: do not get so greedy with the stuff in the bottom, or instead of having over carbonated beers, you’ll get beer bottle bombs! Anyways…the next one came out not so crazily carbonated, and tasted just lovely! The same fruitiness was still there on the nose, but a little lighter; a little grapey(?) and citrusy on the tongue as well as a nice delicate biscuity-malt on the back end. Head retention was okay, but that something we’re still working on – it’s just aesthetics after all

The rest is going into the bottle tonight, so it will be ready for the Jesus vs. Elijah (AKA Easter vs. Passover) showdown at the Shapiro household (my house if you didn’t know – long story)on the 4th April. I won’t tell if the Jews drink beer on passover; I made it with Matzoh grain of course *wink-wink*.