Brewing a Cookout Kolsch

Batch #17

I've never brewed a kolsch before, but I'm familiar with the style. If you want to get technical, a Kolsch should be a top-fermenting, clean, crisp, balanced beer with subtle fruit flavors and aromas, brewed in Cologne, Germany, and served in a tall, narrow 200ml glass called a "Stange."

I'm not going to be overly technical though (ha!).

What's most memorable about a Kolsch is the emphasis on the social over the physical. The Kolsch-serving establishments serve it in the aforementioned small glasses, and when your glass is empty, servers refill it for you without your request, notching your coaster to track your drink count. Rather than the focus being on the drink itself, the focus comes back to the social gathering, the time spent with friends. The drink is the lubricant, the item we've gathered around, the excuse we made to be together. The object is the people we are with.

All of this makes it a perfect summer cookout beer. A lawnmower beer. A party beer, if you will.

My brewing setup. Complete with garage stuff.

 

Here's the plan:

1. A super simple recipe
2. A vigorous fermentation with a Kveik strain
3. A cold, frothy, bright, clear beer on a hot day
4. Profit?

Recipe

• 9.25 lb Pilsner
• 0.75 lb Munich
• 0.25 lb Carafoam
• 1.7 oz Hallertau @60 min.
• 1 packet Kveik Lutra Yeast

Why Kveik Lutra?

Omega Labs Kveik Lutra Yeast

The secret ingredient in beer making is temperature control. It ranks as one of the most important aspects to control in your beer to optimize results. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most costly. For a five gallon batch, to ferment a clean beer at lager temps in the 50's (Fahrenheit, because Freeeeedooooooom), you need a dedicated fridge large enough to hold that whole batch. There are hacks to ferment for the first few days with an ice bucket keeping your fermenter cool, but there's an easier way.

Modern yeast strains like the Kveik strains reduce off flavors from fermenting too warm. Kveik Lutra, if you're not familiar, is actually an farm ale yeast, originating in Norway. But unlike most farm ale yeasts, it does not produce fruity esters, instead, it produces more clean, lager-like results. Let's stress this bit for a second: it will not produce the same results as an actual lager yeast with actual lager temperature control. But it will be enough to fake it. I've used it once before, in a Dark Mexican Lager (OMG it was so good), and I have to say I was impressed.

Brew Day

Brewing Gear

Campden Tablet

My process these days is very basic, and refined enough to enjoy the hours. I started setup at 9:00am, and by 9:24 I was heating my water. Cleveland water is a nice balance of hard and soft, so I have been putting off water adjustments as part of my routine. I'll get to it. For now, I use simple filtered tap water. I do add a Campden tablet to combat chlorine however.

 

The Mash

Mash in

The day was very warm and muggy, which threw off some of my mash temperature control. I use foil to cover the pot (the one I have doesn't have a lid), and then throw towels over that to keep the heat in. But today I overshot the mark a bit, and the mash started at about 160F after mash in. I brought it down to 155F and did my best to keep it there for the full hour.

I forgot to take a photo of mash out, which is a shame because it's the most eye-catching part of my process. I have a pulley I installed in the ceiling, and since I brew in a bag, I simply hoist up the bag, use big rubber gloves to squeeze the bag, and then discard the bag of grains while I bring my wort up to boil. I don't bother with a sparge. As you will see with my gravity reading at the end of brew day, efficiency does not end up being a bottleneck in this process.

The Boil

Begone, Boilover!

Boilover happens to everyone (let me think that, okay?), and let's just say I'm really glad I brew in my garage. That carafoam I think really threw the boil to another level. I was stirring like mad and spraying the foam with StarSan like mad, but it still got the best of me. In these situations, the best thing is really to turn the heat down and lower the boil. At the start of the boil, I threw in my 1.75 oz Hallertau hops in using a mesh bag. This saves me from having to strain a lot when I rack to the fermenter.

Once the foam is defeated and we have a stable boil, it's break time. I had a spot of lunch, and made some Hotchie Scotchies with my wife. If you're not familiar, it's an exclusive brewer's hot cocktail (better in winter lol) made with unhopped wort and smoky scotch. I didn't have any scotch on hand so instead I used 1 shot of bourbon in each cup, and added a bit of liquid smoke. The effect actually worked better than expected. My wife wasn't a fan. We'll stick with beer.

With 10 minutes left to the boil, I added my immersion chiller, Whirlfloc tablet, and yeast nutrient. Because Kveik Lutra is such a vigorous fementing yeast, I took advice from the internet and doubled the additions. For a 5 gallon batch using Lutra, I add 15g Ferm-O, and 4g DAP. I've done this in the past with good results. A normal yeast would probably have had some off flavors with so much Ferm-O especially.

Sanitizing the immersion chiller.

The Chill

My immersion chiller hoses are too short, and the drain in my garage doesn't work, so I manhandle the 5 gallon batch close to the driveway, hook up my garden hose (already on and ready to go - Pro Tip: get a ball valve attachment for the end of the garden hose so you can turn it on and off from the tip without having to go to the spigot) and let the hot drainings go down the driveway.

Don't drop the boiling hot sugar water

Now, immersion chillers aren't known to be hyper-efficient. I was shopping for a while for counterflow chillers, but they're all so expensive. That is, until I discovered that agitating the wort while chilling dramatically increases the efficiency of the chiller. I got down from boiling to 100F in about 5 minutes, not much longer than a counterflow chiller would do. The 100 degree mark is notable because below that, the alpha and beta acids are supposedly not terribly affected, and thus the bitterness/floralness of your hops remains stable. Is it true? I hope so, I just work here. Anyway-

Agitating the wort chills it faster.

With the wort at temp, I racked into the fermenter (an HDPE bucket, presanitized) until the pot was light enough for me to pick up and pour through a strainer into the bucket. This does two things.

1. Gets the wort into the fermenter right quick.
2. Aerates the wort really well!

1 sanitized packet of Lutra in the fermenter, and it's time to aerate.

 

 

Rack to fermentor

 

Lutra in!

The Gravity

1.054?

I measured the gravity using my hydrometer (psst it's okay to buy polycarbonate hydrometers - they don't shatter!), and it was measuring a bit high at like 1.054.

Refractometer agreed.

I added a bit of filtered tap water. Seems risky to add anything after the chill, but I've done this successfully in the past so I feel confident. The gravity is now either 1.052 or 1.050. You read from the bottom of the meniscus, right? In which case it's 1.052 - still a bit high. I'm okay with that. The BJCP says the OG should be max 1.050. Look at me, breaking all the rules.

The Aerate

I hate aerating. It's five minutes of torture, and I hate it. Just sitting there, shaking the bucket on it's edge, wondering if you're even doing anything, arms burning, sweating in the heat, waiting for it to be over, regretting life decisions. I hate it so much.

The Fermentation

With blow off tube installed, the fermentation is under way. Now technically Lutra is capable of fermenting well as warm as 90F, but I want a super clean tasting beer, so I'm leaving it at my basement's stable 69-70F, as Omega Labs says that gets you the cleanest results. Also, Lutra is apparently able to complete fermentation in as little as a week, but I'm going to let it go for the full two weeks because my experience tells me that more time is always better. Time is your friend. In the fermenter, and especially in the bottle.

It's the yeast's problem, now.

And less than a day later, the fermentation is well under way, lots and lots of activity at the blow off tube. In another day or two, I'll switch out the blow off tube to an airlock and let this thing finish.

L'Chaim!