Holly Gratz Pilsner

Over Christmas I got to talking with Emilie's cousin about my blog. She said she often reads my posts to her coworkers. I was both shocked that someone actually reads my blog an embarrassed that someone actually reads my blog. I told her that I'd name the next beer I made up after her. So...Holly Gratz, this one's for you!
Pretty simple recipe. I was going to do Pilsen only, but Chris at brewbrothers.biz suggested I go with some Carafoam for head retention. Honestly, I'm not sure I know what head retention is (I sort of blushed when he said that...wink, wink). When I got to the brew shop, I had a $75 gift card waiting for me care of my parents for my birthday. I emptied out my ledger on the 10 gallon stout, so this was perfect timing. I've got 39 lbs of 2-row left on the ledger, which means the next two times I brew's going to cost like 4 bucks each!

Ingredients:
13 lbs Pilsen
0.50 lbs Carafoam

Hops:
2 oz Perle @60
1 oz Perle @45
1 oz Saaz @15
1 oz Saaz @0
1 oz Perle Dry Hopped

Yeast:
Wyeast 2001 Pilsner Urquell with a 1 quart starter made a day prior

Water:
5+ gallons strike water @165
collected around 3.5 gallons
3+ gallons (quadruple batch) sparge @190
collected another 3 gallons

Extras:
Whirfloc tablet @5ish
Wyeast yeast nutrient @5ish

Notes:
2-5-2011--Everything was going so well. I was speeding through with no hangups, I even told Emilie that I was about to have two straight perfect brew days; however, at the last sparge the innards separated and stopped filtering. I grabbed a strainer which worked pretty well. Clear wort (I thought) with a pre-boil gravity of 1.044.

Post boil was 1.064 but the wort was suuuper murky. I let it sit while I cleaned and racked the semi clear wort into a bucket, tossed the trub, and racked back to the carboy.

2-7-2011--Fermenting away. I'm shooting for an FG of less than 1.01 so I'll need to let this sit in primary for a week or so. I'm planning on doing a secondary (in the keg or out i'm not sure) for 3 weeks for clarity purposes.
2-13-2011--This is taking longer than I thought I would. It's still bubbling, but it's only at 1.030. I'm thinking of bringing it in the house, then again the word lager means to store or wait, so maybe I should do that.

2-19-2011--Down to 1.018. I'll rack to secondary as soon as a bucket opens up (but I'll rack back to glass).

2-24-2011--Down to 1.017. Racked to secondary.

2-25-2011--Kegged to cold condition for a while. Added the dry hops.

3-8-2011--Lagering blows. I'm over it. Started to carb

4-1-2011--Took the above picture. Pretty good. Sweeter than a Pilsner Urquell but still has the appropriate amount of pilsner skunky taste. I like it; however, I'm not going to do another lager for a while. I just don't think they're worth the wait.