Today I'm Drinking: The Efficient Czech

I recently found a few bottles of the 'Efficient Czech' lying around. It was actually the first beer recipe I concocted myself back in October. My goal was create an inexpensive pilsner variation with the resources and capabilities I had.

A pilsner is a type of lager which was created in a Czech city called Plzen (actually quite a cool city). Today, numerous beers are based after this style including Pilsner Urquell, Stella Artois, and many American beers.

Now a very important characteristic a pilsner is that it's a lager, not an ale. This is a significant difference in the brewing process. They both use different types of yeast. However, the lager uses a bottom-fermenting yeast and is works at lower temperatures, ~55 degrees for a long period of time (often a number of months). An ale is top fermented at a higher temperature, ~65-70 degrees, and is much quicker process.

For me the implications of this are that I cannot currently create a real lager as I have no consistent location or temperature control around 55 degrees. Since I was also just getting into brewing when I brewed the Efficient Czech, 3 months felt too long to wait for an experiment.

Hence I decided to add all the ingredients of typical Pilsner, but use an Ale yeast. This is where the name 'Efficient Czech' comes into play. The yeast will get the job done much more quickly than a lager yeast. This also plays into many of my experiences in the Czech Republic. If you've ever been there for non-vacation purposes, you will have found that getting even some basic tasks done takes a lot of time. It's a very different pace of life; and although still improving significantly, it's easy to see some of the remnants of the past communist structure. Compared to Boston's fast pace, it seems inefficient, although of course there are tradeoffs.

Anyways, enough about the name, and more about the beer!

The recipe is as follows:
-5 lbs pilsner malt extract
-2 oz Saaz Hops
-Munton's Ale Yeast

It's pretty straight forward. Sticking to one type of malt; the Saaz Hops are grown in the Czech Republic and are used in almost all pilsners. The only wrench I threw in was the ale yeast, which we've already discussed. And all of the ingredients together were quite cheap.

The end result: a pretty tasty and simple beer. It's on the lighter end and very drinkable. The only particularly distinguishing characteristic was the yeasty flavor to it, which a lot of people actually liked. I think I'll actually recreate a variation of this soon so I'm ready for the summer months!