End of hiatus?
One of the things my fiancee and I want to do for our wedding next fall is have some homebrewed beer for the reception and possibly a tasting session of our favorite craft beers and homebrews. I like the idea because it'll give us something different to do during the reception AND I get to brew up a ton of beer. Double win.
So the next task is to think of some beer styles I can brew up that will be fun to make and drink and the first thing I thought of was Kolsch ale. It's light, clear and fairly crisp, so non-craft beer drinkers won't get weirded out and if done right can pack a lot of flavor and feel into something that looks like a macro brew. Thumbing through How To Brew and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing gave me an idea of where I should start and thumbing through homebrew forums yielded a ton of recipes. From those I cobbled together an all-grain recipe that looks something like:
Malt:
11 lbs German pilsner
1 lb Vienna
1 lb Cara Pils
Hops
1 oz US hallertau 4.6 % AA (60 min)
1 oz Tettnang 4.8% AA (60 min)
White Labs WLP029 German Ale/Kolsch Yeast
I'd cut out 2 lbs of the pils malt next time, my original gravity was 1.064, which is high for the style.
This brew also featured my sweet new equipment:
Best use of a turkey fryer that doesn't involve hot oil.
So that went swimmingly, the yeast started doing its thing and the bubbles from the airlock burbled me to sleep. And then the weather decided to turn balmy and beautiful here in MI.
One of the reasons the Kolsch style is clean-tasting is because it's fermented at lower temperatures than most other ales and I was concerned that the fermentation would start producing off flavors. I turned to Science for my salvation:
Swamp cooler to the rescue! The primary is sitting in a tub of water, covered in a towel that is wicking up the water. The fan evaporates the water on the towel, cooling the fermenter and keeping the yeastie beasties under control and well-behaved.
Hopefully we'll get our brew on some more this weekend for some Marzen fun...
