BeerBorg

I'm trying to brew great lagers, particularly classic European Pilsner, German or Czech. Many recipes include carapils, I don't have any. I know that some brewers believe that only pilsner malt is necessary. Clone Brews (book) has a few ounces of carahell (essentially carapils) and dark munich in most lager recipes. I have biscuit, victory, vienna, munich 10l, C15, and a few others. What would you do and why?

I know many recipes include some sort of crystal malt. I have found that I do not want to add crystal malt to all of my recipes. For some styles base malt by itself is perfectly fine. There are some recipes where crystal malt makes the recipe and frankly if you like crystal malt in a recipe you should use it.
To me a nice pilsner is how base pilsner malt is hopped. (Again not saying anyone should not add what they like.)
You mention Munich malt. Nothing wrong with 100% munich malt in a lager as far as I am concerned.

I've never brewed a true lager.

But I've brewed "lager ish" ales using lager ingredients and clean ale yeasts at the low end of their range.

If you want to brew a lager with Pilsner malt, hops, and yeast, I say that you should go for it. If you use a hop like Saaz, you're basically following what's done in Pilsen (aka Plzeň), which is kind of the original home of the style.

bpgreen wrote:......If you want to brew a lager with Pilsner malt, hops, and yeast, I say that you should go for it. If you use a hop like Saaz, you're basically following what's done in Pilsen (aka Plzeň), which is kind of the original home of the style.

When I want to brew a Czech pilsner I think Bohemian floor malted pilsner with Saaz additions. When I think German pilsner, German pilsner malt with Hallertau additions. An nice CAP, 6 row and flaked corn with cluster additions.
When you hit on the hop schedule you like just sub the ingredients.

You don't "need" carapils in anything.

Some of the best beers I've made where just 100% pilsner beers that were SMaSH beers, with just Saaz or the like and yeast.

I guess the closest thing to a Pilsner I've brewed is a Kolschbier as far as the water profile goes. The grains I use are 95% Pilsner and 5% Vienna malt. I may be wrong but when I do brew a Pilsner I would use the same approach using WLP-800 instead of WLP-029 yeast.

FWIW, water profiles of Pilsners vary quite greatly depending on the region they are from. They are not all "very soft water" as everyone seems to think.

I ran my water through Brewer's Friend, it's good.