Matthew Kocsis

I started today trying to make a clone of Rogue’s Morimoto’s Imperial Pilsner, however things didn’t go exactly as planned. I somehow ordered brewmart pilsner malt, and when Scott and I tasted it before pouring it in the boiling water it tasted a bit bitter… After reading the ingredients I found that it was “hopped malt”. It didn’t say that anywhere, and when I ordered it that wasn’t marked. So we gave up on the clone and just made a hoppy pilsner (we added everything from the hop schedule from 15 minutes on). I also think we made a mistake with the malt amount, the clone recipe called for 10lbs of LME, however after using the 8lbs of the hopped malt the OG was 1.045 (reading more on the back of the can shows that this was expected). Looks like the imperial pilsner will need something on the order of 15lbs. Here’s the recipe:

5.5 Gallons Water
7.92lbs Czech Pisner malt (pre-hopped). Boil @ 45 minutes
Saaz pellet hops, 4.4% @ 15 minutes
Hallertauer flower hops, 5.8% @ 15 minutes
Saaz pellet hops, 2.6% @ 1 minute
Tettnang pellet hops, 4.4% @ 1 minute
Wyeast Czech Pilsner yeast

OG 1.045 @ 85F

We were able to cool the wort down well using a mound of snow on my patio. I also used the turkey fryer to bring the water up to boiling before bringing it inside and adding malt/hops, which saved us an hour.

We’ll see how this one turns out, It’ll probably be much hoppier than planned, but what’s brewing without a little experimentation?

Next up: Saison!