Out of the Bottle: Bohemian Kölsch

My Bohemian Kölsch has reached maturity and is ready to pour. The final numbers yielded a 1.008 Final Gravity and a light 4.9% ABV. The ABV is actually a touch higher than my target. But as I've stated before, Qbrew regularly predicts higher Final Gravities than what I end up with. In the future, I'll be compensating for that discrepancy in my recipes.

As you can see from the photo, the beer pours a bright gold, with a dense white head. Clarity is about as good as you're going to get from an unfiltered, bottle-conditioned beer. The head slowly falls to a thin blanket of foam and leaves a healthy amount of lace in its wake.

My goal of melding a Kölsch with a Bohemian Pils seems to have worked. The big picture is a beer that's crisp and refreshing. The nose is dominated by pepper, lemon and fresh cut grass. The beer isn't a lager, so there is a touch of fruitiness from the yeast as well. In the mouth, a light honey sweetness gets things going. Bitterness comes on fast with the spicy kick I expect from Saaz hops. The bitterness level is just right for a good Pils. It lingers into the finish. The beer's body is light and has the vigorous carbonation I wanted.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with this one. The beer mashes the two styles together, just like I had hoped for. Between me, family and friends, I think this one will be gone quickly. It's perfect for mowing the lawn, gardening, or just hanging out in the shade on a hot day.

Comments

In the Fermentor: Kitchen Sink Barleywine

The Leftovers It's time for a cleanup of leftover grains and partially used packets of hops from 2012. With the exception of the 2-Row base malt, everything in the recipe below has been sitting on the shelf, or in the fridge waiting to be used. I had several open hop packages, some leftover toasted malts and a half-full bottle of malt extract too. I also had yeast cultured from my White House Honey Porter . My decision was to use almost all of my leftovers and make a partial-mash Barleywine. The finished beer will be quite strong and quite bitter. A toasted malt backbone should nicely complement pine, spice and citrus hop flavors. Because of the beer's strength, it will not be ready for at least three months and should improve with age. The recipe has been scaled up to five gallons from the 2.5 gallons I actually brewed: Grains: 9 lbs Rahr 2-Row 8.5 oz Victory 7.5 oz Brown Hops: Bittering: 0.75 oz Chinook (11.1% a.a.): 60 min 0.5 oz Colum...

In the Fermentor: Flaming Pumpkin

I'll admit that I'm not a huge Pumpkin Beer fan. I didn't have one on my brewing calendar for this year and didn't have my sights set on one for next Fall either. Then my niece came along and threw down the gauntlet. She asked me to brew her a pumpkin beer and I accepted the challenge. I did a lot of reading to see how to best go about using pumpkin in beer. Some people mash it with the grains. Others add it to the brew kettle during the boil. Some add it to the primary or secondary fermentor. The consensus from professional brewers appears to be adding it to the mash, so I took the same approach. The pumpkin was cooked ahead of time by my girlfriend to soften it, convert some of the starch and help release some of its sugars. It then joined the grains in the mash. I really want the pumpkin pie effect here, so I've thrown in all of the requisite spices toward the end of the boil. I've also gone with just enough bitterness to balance the sweetness of the ...

Out of the Bottle: Flaming Pumpkin

It's Halloween night and Flaming Pumpkin is ready to frighten away the ghosts and goblins. Hopefully it won't also frighten away the people who drink it. This is my first Pumpkin Beer, so I was flying blind outside of doing research and trying commercially available brews. I basically cobbled together suggestions I thought were the best approach to the style, with a vision in my head of what the finished product should taste like. So how did it turn out? Pretty good. My goal was pumpkin pie in a bottle. What I got is more spice than sweet, but I still like it. The pie spices are right out front, with clove and cinnamon leading the way. The sweeter flavors are muted and focused toward dark sugars from the brown sugar and dark crystal malt. Bitterness is just enough, with no hop flavors competing with the spices. And what about the pumpkin? You can taste it. It's subtle. But you can definitely tell it's there. Overall? I'm quite happy and hope that my niece l...

Colorado Kitchen Brew

Search This Blog