Maggie Kolsch - Wednesday, December 1, 2021

I made my final decision of what style of beer I am mostly going to brew. Kolsch.

Brewers Pantry for now is selling Pils Malt for $76 a sack. That is reasonable, since

everything else is stupid expensive.

NEW PAC OF WLP029. OVER BUILD NUMBER 1.

Ingredients

11 lbs. CMC

6 ozs. Munich II - 9 L 

8 ozs. Wheat

5 ozs. Acid Malt

30 g Tettnanger at 60 min.

26.9 g Hallertauer at 60 min.

WLP029 - After transferring 1 L of starter to the mason jar, I was short 500 ml. Corrected it

                  for the next brew.

O.G. - 1.049 - ( 86% )

F.G. -  1.010

% -       5

SRM - 3.4

BU - 19.4

Water Profile - David Heath ( You Tube )

CA - 37  

MG - 7

S04 - 70

CI - 35

PH - 5.35

MASH - 6 Gal

SPARGE - 5 Gal

I am switching the amount of water in my mash and sparge. I will use less mash water so I can use my top plate more easily. I will make it up in the sparge and also not worrying about going to the 8 gallon mark in Mr. Robobrew. Do not do this again. You risk astrigent flavours by over sparging.

                                                    BREW DAY NOTES

Not enough mash water. The level still went above the middle malt pipe and over flowed down to the bottom and grains got down there. Maybe go with 5.5 gallons in the sparge next time will give it an easier flow. You could of shut the pump off, let it settle lower and then with some needle nose pliers, lift the pipe a bit, but I shouldn't have to do that with a proper flow. Added too much sparge water as it was hard to judge since it was such a stupid slow flow from the sparge. Fine, anything above 4% is fine with me. Robobrew says it has a good rolling boil at 225 F, not sure why it does that. The mash was fine, I used my thermopen. It says the boil is 211 F. Fine with that. I do give the mash 2 - 3 F to do it's thing, as long as it is around 149 F to 152 F this style of beer will be fine. A lot of trub in the carboy as I didn't do a whirlpool, yea, lazy. Won't do that again. However, the wort tasted great.

Wlp029 pitched at 12:30.

                                                           FERMENTATION NOTES

Dec. 2 - Going good the next morning. 64 F. Set it a bit lower, trying to get to around 62 F.

Dec. 3 - Same. 60F. Need to go higher - 62 - 64F. Doing a D rest later on too.

Dec. 4 - 62F - 64 F, finally. Leaving it here for a few days more and when it starts to

              slow down, shut off fridge and hope it gets to around 66 F to finish.

Dec. 5 - Same.

Dec. 6 - Slowed down a lot. Still going, but way slower than yesterday. Turning dark

              which is a sign of being done, but it has only been 5 days. I hope I get good

              attenuation because if this finishes high, it will suck big time. 66 F. May

              turn on heater tonight and shut the door to keep it warm to keep going. This

              may not be a good thing for the yeast, but better than finished too high. I

              did pitch 1600 ml of yeast instead of 2000 ml of yeast, so this is all my

              fault. Corrected that with a huge starter for Dec. 22.

Dec. 9 - Not doing much, so it is done. Not sampling, don't want to expose it to air

              except when I am kegging it. I should go back to a pressure transfer, but I

              would need a 3/8" hose that fits my orange cap, but using the fermenter

              I have I can't do that. Just do it slow, purge the keg and go from there.

              I can keg this in 5 or 6 days from now. No hurry though as I will not need it

              until Dec. 25th.

Dec. 10 - Seems to be done, the air lock has no bubbles in it and there is no activity.

               However, when you shine a flash light on it, you can see stuff still

               flying around going up and down. I saw C02 bubbles going up and that is

               good until it is done and then it is not good. Keg in 5 - 7 days and hope

               all is good. I usually never see this kind of activity. It is called autalyisys

               something like that. I do know that it is not good. It is eating itself. I don't

               think I have that at this early stage.

Dec. 11 - Still krausen falling down to the bottom of the carboy. Ambient temp 64 F.

Dec. 12 - Can keg this is I need to, but I will wait a few more days. Leave enough

               time for the gelatin to clear this well. I do want it clear, but it will never

               be bright without filtering. I will filter next spring when I hopefully get

               this style down to where I want it. 4 cases of bottles I have never used

               and 2 cases of Beaus quart bottles to be filled too.

                                                      SAMPLED TODAY

This finished quite fast and I am wondering what the FG is. I will steal a sample for

taste as well. Normal - 1.010 - 5%. Taste is where I thought it should be. The Munich II

has given it more of a malty taste to zip up the bland CMC. I most likely will go back to

Munich I when I use Pils malt. This will be a good beer. The water profile seemed to 

work just fine.

                                    KEGGING DAY - Tuesday, December 14

                                    GELATIN added on Wednesday, December 15.

                                    TRANSFERD to another keg on December 24.

I think it is time for a small sample because it is Day 5. It has to start to clear but I can get away with 9 days under gelatine as this is WJ beer anyway. Gelatine seems to be working. Darker than Promash says it should be. Not much though, around 4 - 4.5 SRM. Taste is good so far. Maltier than my previous Kolsch beers, but I did use Munich II. This would be a real nice beer if aged a month. I will get there next year for sure. This Kolsch may taste just as good as a lager without all of the lager fermentation bullshit that lagers have. Glad the water profile worked out. Now I can tweek it to where I want and when May comes next year I can brew twice the amount and fill all of my bottles that are still empty and have never been used. 

Needs to age longer. Has that green/syrup like taste which is normal for this style and the yeast that I use. Maybe New Years, but you are going out so let it be. No reason to tap the keg yet. You have lots of beer from Xmas gifts. Seems to be ageing fine, but still needs some time though. New Years I guess.

For some reason I am picking up a strong taste of malt. How can 6 ozs. of Munich II malt dominate a beer like this is doing? I am out of Munich II and won't use it again. In the new year I am going with Pils malt and Carafoam and Wheat. Ordered the ingredients to be sent after the New Year. It can't be grainy as there aren't any specialty grains in it to taste grainy. It is David Heath's Kolsch recipe, should be good. Done with Munich malt. Should be a good light tasting Kolsch with more hop aroma and bitterness without a grain taste. Mr. Robobrew does in fact amplify darker grains in recipes like this for some reason. Won't happen again.

                                           SAMPLED ON DEC. 31

Just to see if the grainy taste is going away. It is now17 days old now and if it isn't going away soon, it never will. It is like a wort taste which I really hate. I should of known better as a delicate beer like this will show any darker or fuller grains than wheat or carafoam malts. Duh!! Oh well, the new year is here soon and that is when I need to go some final tweeks.

Nope, still has that grainy taste. I hope it isn't oxidation, seems to be close to that. However, the Kolsch after this used the same ingredients, so I will know then. My smash beer was kegged the same way and I taste no grainy or oxidation at all. So, this is as good as it is going to get. Just wait until the end of January to compare Kolsch beers and then figure out what is what.

                                                 MORE SAMPLING ON JAN 1

Grainy taste is fading and an unpleasant taste has taken its place. Never tasted this before. Either my yeast is funky, or something happened during fermentation that I did but never noticed. Either way, this beer sucks. And to think I have another one right behind it. If it sucks too, I will be forced to toss out my WLP029 and buy some Escarpment Kolsch just to change something. Can't keep doing the same thing and getting the same results.

                                              UPDATE ON JANUARY 7

What a turn around!! From a dumper to a real nice beer. Still too malty for me, but today's sample was quite good. Tastes pretty well the same as Publican House Ale with a lower bitterness. Mine is better. I am still not going to make this again as I am going with lagers in the winter and bitters in the summer.

This beer was kegged too early for one thing. I guess I got away with it, but my next one will be kegged on day 17. When they say Kolsch beers need to age longer than normal beers, they are right. This was almost a dumper a week or so ago. Now it seems to be a good beer. Although I don't like the recipe as it turned out, I learned to let beer age like lagers.