Kolsch

I have been brewing lately, but not blogging about it. I'll try to keep this a little more up to date.

Decided to brew something light and inoffensive for Christmas, as I have family visiting who are not especially in love with big hoppy brews. This is from Brewing Classic Styles and I've brewed it twice before, though I used the White Labs yeast both times, here I'm using WY2565. Wyeast is very easy for me to get, but white labs is a pain to get hold of. My former source in New South Wales is now out of business and I don't think I'll bother finding a new one.

The grain bill and hop schedule are both very simple. Unfortunately I only realised when I got home from the brew shop that my Hersbrucker hops were 1.8% AA. This was about half what I expected so I threw in a small amount of nugget to bump up the IBUs to something reasonable.

I recirculated this mash at 65C for 60 minutes, then did a rest at 72C for 20 minutes. I no-chilled this and took a 2L starter to which I pitched a full packet of WY2565. About 18 hours later I pitched this into the full batch at 17C. 12 hours later (this morning) I had noticeable activity.

Here's the recipe:


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 95.4     4.67 kg.  Pilsener                        Germany        1.037      1
  4.6     0.23 kg.  Vienna Malt                   Germany        1.036      4

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 40.00 g.    Hersbrucker                   Pellet   1.80  10.6  70 min.
  6.00 g.     Nugget                            Pellet  13.00  11.5  70 min.


WYeast WY2565 Kölsch