Well, the time has come to give you the next brew. Today Jason and myself (April) are brewing Kolsch style beer. This style is distinctive to Cologne, Germany. If you were to have an American beer with Kolsch style labeling, it is exactly that "Kolsch style". It is not considered to be 100% Kolsch, because of it being protected under law it must be directly from this area of Germany. It is like a Pilsner than any other beer I can think of. It is light in color, and has a less bitter kick to it than an actual pilsner, while being pleasantly smooth and refreshing. Its basically in my opinion the best beer to have on those hot summer days! One of my favorite styles of beer actually.
We actually have chosen to work with some pre-made recipes for the first couple of batchs of beer we want to do, so once we get everything down pat, we can start making our own recipes and really getting into it with the extra added ingredients. So we got the recipe from liquid brewing.
Sanitizing and cleaning everything was a very first step, so that way the beer has a less chance of getting infected. Since we only have a 5 gallon pot we have to split up the boiling process of the water to make sure that is disinfected as well. We first used 3 gallons of distilled water to boil, then after boiling took it off heat to cool down. That was a pain because this is where a wort chiller would of came in great need, but as of right now we had to make do with what we had on hand... ice packs and sink full of cold water. Once we got those 3 gallons to a lower temp. we transferred it into our fermenting bucket, so we could start with our other 2 gallons to mix in a boil with our first hop pellets ( Tettnang hops). We will bring this mixture up to a boil, then turn heat off and remove from the burner. Once done we will stir in slowly our malt extract and dry malt until it slowly dissolves, then returning it to the heat again to a boil for 30 minutes.
The smell in the house is of course the smell of wort (yum) it smells really good in our opinon. the smell of syrup is pretty much it in a nutshell, because of the malt. Now that the 30 minutes is up we have added the Hallertau hops and boiling that for 10 minutes, then adding the Saaz hops for another 5 minutes. Once that is completely done we will begin transporting the wort into our fermenting bucket, but yet again our handy dandy ice packs and our sink is going to help us get the wort from 200 degrees down to hopefully about 100 degrees before we pour the mixture through a strainer into the fermenting bucket. We had a little trouble pouring the wort into the bucket with the strainer because the strainer is completely flat, but we finally got it.
Waiting for everything to cool around 90 degrees and then we will be taking a hydrometer reading which is supposed to be at 1.050-1.055 for beginning specific gravity before we introduce the yeast into it. Gravity ranges are different based on the type and style of beer, which is also how you can read the percentage of alcohol in the beer as well.
Hydrometer reading at beginning :1.043 looks like we might be a little off. but im not too worried.
The yeast is now in the fermenting bucket and we have sealed it and stowed it away in our 2nd bathroom.
I think we are going to wait about a week to see if the fermenting has stopped and if so then bottling time!
Dont have exact name yet for this one. Because it is a recipe batch i think we will just name it recipe 1 kolsch.
Up next Jason and I will be conducting a blind taste test of other ciders and our cider. we will post the results... :\ i hope its a good result!
