Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (E.T.I) - Red Honey Strong Lager

As I've stated before, I'm a fan of the Pilsner style.  When I first started putting recipes together, I thought it would be cool to make a black pilsner, and a red pilsner.

In the past year, however, I have learned that when adding malts that give beer a darker color than yellow, most of the time, this results in some sweetness in the beer.  While it's true you can get darker beers to finish dry, the idea behind a pilsner is to have it be dry without the excess flavor of any other malt, like roasted malt in a dry stout.  Mostly, I wanted to make a pilsner, but have it attain more color.

It came to a point where I was nearing the end of my 50-lb bag of 2-Row Malt and my 55-lb bag of Franco-Belges Pilsner malt.  I also had some extra dark munich left over, some honey malt, and more Carafa III than I could probably use to make several Schwarzbiers.  So I started experimenting and came up with the following recipe:

E.T.I (Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)

Imperial Red Pilsner

Batch Size (Gal): 5.5

Total Grain (Lbs): 18.38

Anticipated OG: 1.087 (20.85)

Anticipated SRM:13.6

Anticipated IBU: 109.8

Brewhouse Efficiency: 68 %

Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

9.00 lbs. Pilsener (Franco-Belges)

6.00 lbs. Pale Ale Malt                

2.00 lbs. Munich Malt (Dark, Northern Brewer)

1.00 lbs. Honey (Orange Blossom)

0.25 lbs. Honey Malt

0.13 lbs. Carafa III (Dehusked)

1.00 oz.    Warrior (15.40%AA) First WH

1.25 oz.    ETI Hops (6.83%AA) @45 min.

1.00 oz.    ETI Hops (6.83%AA) @15 min.

1.50 oz.    ETI Hops (6.83%AA) @10 min.

5.25 oz.    ETI Hops (6.83%AA) @0 min.

WYeast 2124 Bohemian Lager (cake from Esper Dark Czech Lager)

I should explain about the ETI Hops.  I had some leftover hops that I wanted to use.  This ended up being 1.25 oz Czech Saaz, 2.75 oz Mt. Hood, and 3 oz of Tettnang. In addition to this, I added 2 oz of Warrior hops.  I mixed all of these up in a bowl and then randomly started pouring the weights for the last 4 additions into the scale bowl and bagging them.  I also used a Bohemian Lager yeast cake from the Esper.  If you are making this from scratch, I would recommend making a HUGE starter using the Budvar yeast (both Wyeast and White Labs make it).

Note that I started this out as an Imperial Red Pilsner.  I was shooting for a dry, hoppy red pilsner at about 9% ABV.  Instead, it finished at 1.025 OG.  I didn't add the Orange Blossom honey until after 3 days of primary fermentation.  I put a half a cup of water in a pan, the honey, and brought it to a boil for 5 minutes and poured it right into the lager.  Still, it's 7.0% ABV, which is pretty good.

Turns out, I should have called this a honey lager, and I should have let it lager for 3 months.  Instead, I let it lager for a month, a keg came open, and I kegged it.  The orange blossom honey was overwhelming the first month in the keg.  I decided to avoid it for a while, and now the overpowering orange aroma has faded (although there was something nice about that - it was somewhat off-putting).

It actually turned out pretty decent, but I learned that lagering "bigger" beers is important.

As far as the artwork, that's from the Blue Oyster Cult album, "Extra-Terrestrial Live" which was my first BOC album.  I still love that album.  While the song, "E.T.I." is awesome, whenever I pull a beer from this keg, I think of "Hot Rails to Hell." TWELVE-SEVEN-SEVEN EXPRESS TO HEAVEN!