Brewfather profile for Brewzilla and Pilsner malt

[hoppyscotty]

I find the standard profile for the Brewzilla in Brewfather works pretty good for me. Recently I've been brewing mostly All Grain recipe kits from the malt miller where the grain is ready crushed. The brewing instructions that come with the kits are pretty light, I guess they cant be too prescriptive due to the variety of different brew kit and methods out there, however transferring the recipe to Brewfather usually gets the vital statistics for the target beer pretty close if not spot one. Similarly brewing usually results in a pretty successful outcome too with the resultant beer being near as damn it spot on.

However the last few brews have included Pilsner malt and I've been having problems. Firstly I'm significantly missing my gravity numbers - like by 10 points...and today where the grain bill was 100% Pilsner - 20 points, and there seems to be a hell of alot of flour in the crush that caused a few stuck mash's and spare's until I started using rice hulls.

What is it about Pilsner malt that is causing me issues? I'm assuming the crush is probably a bit too fine for the brewzilla, but not sure if that is the case. Anyone else have issues with Pilsner malt?

Cheers.

 

[BackToBasics]

I'd be surprised if it was the crush. I've had both normal and fine crushed pilsner malt from TMM and, if anything, got slightly better efficiency with the fine. All using a brewzilla.

As far as I'm aware there's nothing about pilsner malt that would cause the issue either.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along shortly with a more useful answer.

 

[Griff097]

A friend of mine was talking to me about Mash PH and how for different types of beer you need a different target mash PH.
Apart from Campden I don't do any water treatment yet, but for lagers/pilzeners you needed a lower PH than for stouts/ales.
I mainly do Porters/IPA and they turn out fine with my water profile, but a recent Pilzener was 20 points off and I am thinking it is partly to do with this.

 

[BackToBasics]

A friend of mine was talking to me about Mash PH and how for different types of beer you need a different target mash PH.
Apart from Campden I don't do any water treatment yet, but for lagers/pilzeners you needed a lower PH than for stouts/ales.
I mainly do Porters/IPA and they turn out fine with my water profile, but a recent Pilzener was 20 points off and I am thinking it is partly to do with this.

I don't think it's that pilsners need a lower pH - it's that lighter malts don't lower the pH as much as darker malts so more adjustment is needed to bring the pH down to target (I generally aim for 5.25).

pH could definitely be a factor here though. Not sure it'd have that much effect on efficiency but I guess a lot will depend on the pH of the water used.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Mash PH was around 5.6 in the end but I later was pilsner refers mash ph to be in the high 4’s so definitely something to look out for in future. The grist was very floury. Could the flour affect the extraction in some way? Do others find pilsner particularly floury?