Brewed Slowly: #5 Kolsch

This is the first beer I’ve made in a little while. Actually it’s been over a month since the last beer I made. So that’s longer than I’d like it to be. I don’t think I got too rusty in the meantime, but we’ll see. I waited to post about this beer until I bottled it, and right now, the beer’s just gotten into the bottles. We’ll see it again in a couple of weeks or less depending on how impatient I am. I decided to make a Kolsch this time. It’s not a beer I’m very familiar with, but it sounded good.

The Kolsch style, as best I understand, is an ale that can be lagered (fermented at a lower temp. (50-60 F)) and resembles the clean and bright taste of typical lagers. Since most of what I’ve made so far have been pretty traditional ales, I thought something like a lager would be interesting.

The software:

6 lbs. Northern Brewer Wheat Extract

0.5 lb Belgian Pilsner Grain

1 oz. Perle hop pellets

0.5 oz. Cascade hop pellets

Wyeast 2565 Kolsch liquid yeast

I started out with the 0.5 lb of pilsner grain steeping at 150 F. After 30 minutes, I took out the grain and brought the pilsner tea to a boil–this always takes longer than I think it will.

When the liquid finally came to a boil, I added the extract (I always let the liquid extract sit in a bowl of hot water to loosen up the thick syrup that is the extract so it pours out easier) and the 1 oz. of Perle hop pellets.

This boiled for an hour. I added the Cascade hop pellets just short of the extract boiling for a full hour. At three minutes exactly the Cascades went in.

After the wort cooled for a while in the ice bath, I pitched the yeast and closed that sucker up. It stayed in the primary fermenter for about a week; the original gravity was 1.042 (3/7) and it got down to 1.010 (3/15) before I bottled it.

Also, I thought it’d be fun to report on the records that I listened to while I was making the beer. And for each beer in the future, I’ll list what was playing while those beers are made.

While I was making this Kolsch, I had on:

Mission of Burma-Vs.

The Flaming Lips-Embryonic

Pavement-Wowee Zowee

Man Man-Rabbitt Habits

Sonic Youth-Sonic Nurse

I’ll see if I can taste any of these records in the beer.

Related Posts:

• Brewed Slowly: #3 Red Ale
• Brewed Slowly: Homebrewing Basics
• Here Comes the Beer
• Brewed Slowly: American IPA

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