Canadianish / Kölschy / Summer Ale-like kinda thingie

[Laripu]

Yeah, that's what in brewing today. Ten pounds of Weyermann pilsener malt, one pound of flaked corn, hops are EKG and Tettnanger to 23 BU, and yeast is Kölsch yeast.

Mashed at 125°F for 15 minutes, 147°F for 45 minutes, 152°F for 30 minutes, 158 for 15 minutes.

It will be a thin lager-like ale. My stepson and his family are coming at Christmas, and this is about the only thing I can get him to drink, beside rum and coke. He'll have a drink maybe every second day..... so I hope I like it.

[Laripu]

It occurs to me that some of you who haven't been around that long might be wondering why I'm brewing a light-ish summer ale type of beer at this time of year. Look to your right...you'll notice I'm in Tampa, Florida. The high today will be 28°C. . At Christmas, it will still be around 25°C, dropping to around 10 at night. The coldest evening may get to 0... maybe.

[Manx Guy]

Hi!

It will be light, Tett are My favoured hops for Kolsch style beers...
It should go down well with your stepson...

Cheers

Guy

[Laripu]

The inspiration for this beer is Molson Export Ale. It's the Canadian beer that I first liked and drank until the microbreweries became widespread and started to produce better beer. It's not a bad beer, just a little boring nowadays. Golden ale used to be the predominant style in Canada, until lagers took over. It's typically called just Ex, instead of "export". The tall ship that symbolizes export, when turned on its side, looks like an armadillo, so some people call it armadillo beer.

Here's what it looked like when I was a lad, and today. (It wasn't really bigger then... maybe it just felt that way. )



And what my version will look like, when it's bottled:



I've edited it to add images of hops & barley, and increased lettering size.

[Laripu]

Bottling this tomorrow. Updated label is below.

Here's something weird concerning the Kolsch yeast. When I started lagering, I slowly brought the temperature down from 68°F to 34°F. I expected the airlock to fall at some point, and it did, at about 44°F.

Then, strangely, at 37°F, it rose again. Something is fermenting again. Could it be that some Kolsch cells are that cold tolerant, and when the others dropped out, it left the field clear for those cold-tolerant ones to reproduce and ferment whatever was left to ferment? Weird.

[killer]

I brewed a Kolsch 12 weeks ago. 3 weeks in primary and 6 weeks in a secondary barrel. I vented it every 4 days or so and it was still producing gas towards the end....
It seems to be one of those yeasts that keeps chugging away. Finding the same thing in the bottle - my bottles usual carbonate 100% in 3-5 days. However the Kolsch bottles are successively gasier each time I open one - even after 3 1/2 weeks.

[Manx Guy]

Interesting Lari,..

Which yeast are you using as I understand that the origins of White labs and Wyeast are different..?

One is possibly the Fruh yeast and another is from a brew pub in Cologne...

I have found the same after lagering, kegging and moving to a fridge for serving at about 6C
Something is deffinately going on!
lol

At one point I thought it may have been some lactic thing as I used Sauer malt in a few of my receipes. However this seems to happen to even the one without the Sauermalt.

Cheers!

Guy

[6470zzy]

Bottling this tomorrow.

Are you by any chance using "stubby bottles?" I miss those bottles and I have never seen a source to purchase them from.

Cheers

[Laripu]

Interesting Lari,..

Which yeast are you using as I understand that the origins of White labs and Wyeast are different..?

One is possibly the Fruh yeast and another is from a brew pub in Cologne...

I have found the same after lagering, kegging and moving to a fridge for serving at about 6C.

I used WLP029. (I like the tubes. I use them to harvest and store yeast.) I've used WLP029 many times before, never noticed this, but also never lagered this cold. Previously it was just a secondary at 50°F (=10°C).

How about you? Which did you use?

My grain bill was 10 lbs of Weyermann pilsener malt, and 1 lb of flaked corn. I agree that the grain bill is probably largely irrelevant, provided there is proper nutrition for the yeast.

I'm uncertain how I should prime the batch for 2 volumes of CO2. I was going to use 41gm of white sugar, but I think I'll err on the side of caution and use only 20 gm so I don't get bottle bombs.

[Laripu]

Just remembered one more relevant thing. From the primary, I had blow-off overflow into a gallon jug, which I bottled, at the time I siphoned to secondary. There were 3 half-litre Grolsch bottles, primed with half a teaspoon of white sugar per bottle. (I normally batch-prime, but this was just 3 bottles, siphoned directly from the overflow - very yeasty.) They were left at room temperature, which here varies between 73°F and 77°F.

I drank those about two weeks after bottling, and they were very fizzy, much more than I like. (But the taste was spot-on for a Canadian blond ale.)

At the time, I attributed the fizziness to the amount of yeast in the bottle. (Half-mm settled on the bottom. I had to pour carefully.) Now I think it's the yeast variety, not the quantity. Maybe I shouldn't prime at all, since the bottles will be at room temperature.

[6470zzy]

I'm uncertain how I should prime the batch for 2 volumes of CO2. I was going to use 41gm of white sugar, but I think I'll err on the side of caution and use only 20 gm so I don't get bottle bombs.

Give this a try, it has always served me well:
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

[Laripu]

Bottling this tomorrow.

Are you by any chance using "stubby bottles?" I miss those bottles and I have never seen a source to purchase them from.

Cheers

Yeah, I miss them too. Stubbies meant beer, when I was a teen.

No, I don't have any, wouldn't know where to buy them. I'm using American longnecks, standard bottles.

[Laripu]

I'm uncertain how I should prime the batch for 2 volumes of CO2. I was going to use 41gm of white sugar, but I think I'll err on the side of caution and use only 20 gm so I don't get bottle bombs.

Give this a try, it has always served me well:
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

Thanks, it suggests 1.2 oz = 34 gm, assuming the gallons it's using are American gallons. Other calculators I've used give similar numbers.

But it isn't the calculation that worries me. I think the yeast type buggers up the calculation.

Cheers.

[Laripu]

OK, it's bottled, and the labels look really good on the bottles. I only used 20 gm of white sugar to prime. If the yeast already used up all the sugar, that should give a low 1.7 volumes of CO2. If the yeast keeps going, it might be closer to the 2 volumes I want. My wife tasted a bit of the raw beer, and she said it tasted sweet. I only tasted hop, but my wife is more sensitive to sweet taste.

In two weeks, I'll try the snout of the batch, a 200 ml bottle that was the end of the 23 litre batch.