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St. Louis, Missouri’s 2nd Shift Brewing has developed a reputation for characterful beer of a high technical quality, without pretensions. This homebrew-scale recipe is based on the brewery’s popular Czech-influenced pilsner, which features a big smack of Saaz hops flavor. It gets a simple single-infusion mash with a dextrin boost (for foam and body) from a handful of Carafoam malt.
Steve Crider, 2nd Shift’s founder and brewer, explains how he decided to brew Technical Ecstasy after a visit to Czechia: “I went to the Urquell and Budvar breweries in 2008 and had the best beer I’ve ever tasted, talked to some brewers there, and formulated recipes based on what they talked about. Water is number one. Good malt is also number one, and so are yeast and hops for that matter.”
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.055
FG: 1.015
IBUs: 40
ABV: 5.2%
