Purple Corn Pre-Prohibition Pilsner

Today I'm brewing a variation of the Pre-Prohibition Pilsner that I brewed a few years back. I'm incorporating some home-malted purple corn in place of the flaked corn used in the original recipe. You may ask, why am I doing a purple corn Pilsner? Is it because purple corn Pilsners are all the rage outside of Utah, and Utah has been slow to catch on? Well no, it's just because it's fun to experiment with different ingredients. One note: when using corn malt, you need to crack it before you can mill it. I put mine in the blender on its lowest speed for 10-20 seconds. You want tho crack the kernels, not make flour. Here's the recipe as I'm brewing it today.

7.25# Rahr Standard 6-Row
1.75# Home-Malted Purple Corn
0.25# Cara-Pils
1.0g BrewTan B (dissolved in warm water, mash)
4ml Hopshot (60 min)
11g Cluster (10 min)
0.5 Whirlfloc
0.5t Wyeast Nutrient
4.66g BCAA (dissolved in warm water or wort, 5 min)
Saflager W-34/70

Step mash: 30 min at 122F, 45 min at 158F, mashout at 168F for 10 min. 90  minute boil. Chill to 51F then ramp up to 55F over 48 hours. Perform a diacetyl rest when gravity is ~1.020.

Water Profile
To 10 gallons of distilled water, add:

• 0.8g Gypsum
• 0.2g Pickling Salt
• 2.2g Epsom Salt
• 0.8g Calcium Chloride
• 0.8g Baking Soda
• 0.4g Chalk

Brewing Notes

I was a little high on the initial step; about 130F. I added some ice cubes to my heat exchanger to drop the temps. The rest of the brew day went well with no issues. The wort looks like grape soda. OG came in at 1.052 (~13.7 brix). I was able to chill down to 65F, and it'll continue to chill down to 51F overnight before I aerate and pitch yeast.

1st Runnings; Pre-boil; Post-boil

Update 8/7/2019
The yeast took a little bit to get going, but gravity is down to 1.044 this morning.

Update 8/8/2019
Gravity is down to 1.035 this morning per Tilt. I should be able to start ramping temps up for a diacetyl rest Friday night or Saturday morning.

Update 8/15/2019
I hooked up my CO2 reservoir this morning and have started dropping temps for the cold crash. On that note, I used to ramp temps down for the cold crash because the school of thought was that too rapid of a drop could cause off flavors (from yeast releasing compounds). However, a recent Brulosophy experiment seemed to show that quick vs. slow temp drops doesn't have a negative impact, so I've been letting it go as fast a my little ferm chambers will go.