Two Beers One Night

It had been a while since I spent an entire evening brewing and had a few unused fermenting buckets lying around, so I decided to put myself to the test by brewing two beers in one night! Luckily I carefully chose the recipes to make sure I wouldn't be up brewing until 4 am.

If you look at my recent posts, you'll notice I've been using a lot of darker malts. This has created a problem for me given my New Year's Resolution... I'm not always in the mood for a heavy/darker beer. At this moment, I probably have enough chocolate stout to last me the entire summer. Hence I've decided to start using a lighter variation of malts in future experimental recipes in general.

It also happens that summer is coming, so I decided to take it to more of an extreme and brew both a Berliner Weisse & Pilsner, both of which are beers I have made before.

In the past I've used the Berliner Weisse recipe for a peach weisse, which actually turned out to be quite refreshing. I'm still undecided as to whether I'll modify it before bottling at all. Maybe another fruit beer or maybe just keep it simple.

Either way, the Berliner Weisse was extremely quick to brew. The recipe simplified consisted of 4 lbs of dried malt extract, 2 ounces of Hallertau hops, and White Labs Berliner Weisse yeast. As you can see there are no grains involved, so the only part that needs to be boiled extensively is the hops (and the malt extract for sanitization purposes).

Having set aside the Berliner Weisse wort to cool, I still had plenty of energy left and decided to push forward with my pilsner! Currently I'm down to my last few bottles of the Efficient Czech; really just saving them for special occasions at this point. I did enjoy the prior outcome, so I figured I'd replicate my success... however with a bit more experimentation this time!

I cloned my original recipe except for one thing: I threw in 2 lbs of beechwood smoked malt grains. You may recollect my previous encounter with it with my rauchbier. However, that did not end so well and I didn't get to enjoy a nice smokey beer. My intention is to give this pilsner a slight smokey flavor that doesn't overpower the beer altogether; a lighter version of a rauchbier suitable for the summer. However, it's going to be a fine line, which I may have crossed but hopefully not. I'll find out soon enough!

Time wise, the smoked pilsner was a quick brew as well; the only time consuming process being steeping the beechwood smoked malts. By the end of the brew session, the evening still have plenty of time left!