Some experience · 20 litres · all grain
Kolsch
A Cologne hybrid: fermented warm with an ale yeast, then lagered cold until the fruit recedes and it drinks like a delicate pils with a soft, wine-like edge.
Original gravity
1.048
at 72% efficiency
Final gravity
1.011
77% apparent attenuation
Alcohol
4.8%
by volume
Bitterness
22 IBU
Tinseth
Colour
3.6 SRM
7 EBC, Morey
Grain bill
4.30 kg
0.21 kg per litre
Brewed to Kolsch, and all five computed figures land inside the published ranges for it.
OG inFG inABV inIBU inSRM inWhat decides this beer
The cold conditioning. Fermented at 16C and packaged straight away this is a decent golden ale; given a month near freezing it becomes a Kolsch.
Fermentables
| Malt | Weight | Colour | Extract | Of grist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilsner malt | 3.60 kg | 1.8 L | 37 ppg | 84% |
| Vienna malt A touch of Vienna. Pilsner malt alone lands below the style's own colour floor. | 0.45 kg | 3.5 L | 36 ppg | 10% |
| Wheat malt Head retention on a beer that has nothing else to hold one. | 0.25 kg | 2 L | 37 ppg | 6% |
Colour and extract are read from the malt reference, not typed into this recipe, so they are the same figures every other page on the site uses.
Crushing your ownGrain mill$92.90Hop schedule
| Hop | Weight | Alpha | Time | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tettnanger | 35 g | 4.5% | 60 min | 18.6 IBU |
| Hallertau Mittelfrueh | 20 g | 4% | 10 min | 3.4 IBU |
Alpha acid varies by crop year and lot, which is why it lives on the recipe rather than on the variety. Brew to the figure printed on your packet and the bitterness will move; the IBU calculator will tell you by how much.
Method
- 01Mash at 65C for 60 minutes.
- 02Boil 90 minutes; this is a pilsner malt grist and DMS is a real risk.
- 03Ferment at 16C. Expect sulphur in the first week, which will clear.
- 04Cold condition at 1C for a month. This is the step people skip and it is the style.
- 05Package at 2.6 volumes.
Numbers for the day
- Mash
- 65 C for 60 min
- Strike water at 3 L/kg
- 71.2 C
- Strike volume
- 12.9 L
- Boil
- 90 min
- Ferment
- 15-17 C
- Carbonate to
- 2.6 volumes
- Priming dextrose
- 136 g
- Yeast
- Kolsch YeastWyeast 2565
Strike temperature assumes grain at 20C and priming assumes the beer peaked at 20C after fermentation. Recompute both for your own kitchen on the strike and priming calculators.
For the mashDigital thermometer$12.31
For the fermentTemperature controller$36.00Before you package
Take a gravity reading two days apart and only package when it has not moved. A beer bottled while still fermenting keeps fermenting in the bottle, and the sugar you prime with lands on top of whatever was left. At 2.6 volumes this one needs about 136 g of dextrose for the batch.
To know it has finishedHydrometer and trial jar$21.99