Siebel’s Anniversary Pre-Prohibition Pilsner
This is cool: the Siebel Institute, the US’s oldest brewing school, is releasing a recipe for brewers to recreate. It’s their 150th anniversary, and they thought it would be great if breweries had a beer they could all make. What kind of beer would a school founded by a German immigrant in the late 1800s select? Their choice was chose an almost inevitable, and certainly appropriate:
We came to an obvious decision as to which type of beer style would best celebrate our history, which was a Classic American Pilsner or CAP. But why a CAP? This beer style dates to the late 1800s, which coincides with the arrival of Dr. Siebel to America and the establishment of the school bearing his name.
The recipe, which you can find at the bottom of the post, is a classic: it includes six-row malt and corn in the grist and uses Cluster hops for bittering, before a final does of Hallertau Hersbrucker to give it that classic “fine” European flavor and aroma the American hops of the day couldn’t provide.
It’s also cool to see the bones of the classic German approach bent to the needs of brewers working with American ingredients. The mash schedule omits a 122-degree protein rest, which I assume has to do with improvements in malts available today. But from there it goes to 144 degrees and 162 degrees, with a final stop at 172. This is identical to a classic progression German brewers still use today in fact, in The Secrets of Master Brewers, those are precisely the same stops I list in Florian Kuplent’s Bavarian lager chapter. Of course, they were working with six-row malt, so the grist differed.
Keith Lemcke wrote about it in a Siebel blog post, explaining the thinking behind the beer:
John Hannafan, vice president and director of education of Siebel, along with research scientist and pilot brewer Tim Foley, formulated a recipe that used ingredients that would “as close as possible” typify what a late 1800’s American Pilsner may have been like, including the use of corn and 6-row barley malt. “The use of 6-row barley malt was important,” states Hannafan, “as this was widely used in those days, and the enzymes contributed by the 6-row malt assisted with the conversion of the corn adjunct, and use of the adjunct should make for a smoother tasting beer.” Both hop strains used were traditional American and German varieties with “roots” in brewing that date back generations.
The cool thing is the recipe is given in percentages, so it’s easy enough to scale. If homebrewers wanted to take the recipe and run with it (provided they can find the hops), they can try it at home. I hope to see one of these on tap somewhere. Looks like a fun beer.
Here’s their recipe, which you can also find here.