Homebrew Summer: Sleeping with the Fishes

We’re only two weeks into the second coming of famed, historic local craft-beer spot, Home Brew Mart, and the eager team there is already getting into the Homebrew Summer action. It’s not surprising, considering they’ve sponsored this initiative since we launched it way back in 2021 and Assistant Manager Derek Laurisden has carefully transcribed all of the homebrew-scaled recipes we’ve published. This time around, they dug into their deep archives of recipe sheets and pulled out one that they’re particularly keen on, a New Zealand-hopped Pilsner called Sleeping with the Fishes. We’ll let Laurisden get into more on why he and his colleagues chose to share this beer (plus lots about pH), the recipe for which can be downloaded below.

New beer recipes will debut weekly throughout the summer, so be sure to check back with San Diego Beer News on a regular basis (or subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter and we’ll send all the recipes straight to your inbox). Cheers and happy homebrewing!

Derek Laurisden
Assistant Manager, Home Brew Mart

Why did you choose to share this recipe and do you have any tips for homebrewers?
We chose this recipe, frankly, because we absolutely love to drink it. Crisp and dry with a potent dry hop punch, it was thirst-quenching and at the same time satisfied our hop addiction. This beer is all about pH management. If you want to have some practice monitoring your pH levels, this beer really benefits from whipping out your meter. We added about one-and-a-half grams of gypsum to the mash to bring us to a pH of 5.3; we use filtered city water. Using small amounts of phosphoric acid, we had a targeted pH for knockout at 5, for dry-hop at 4.3 and for packaging at 4.55. If you have questions about the importance of our focus on pH at these stages, and what tools and solutions are best for pH management, stop in and ask us or send us an email.