Apr
17
2009
Brew Day #10 — Sweetheart Kölsch 
After trying to summon my inner Dogfish Head and it not quite working (not Sam’s fault … just mine and my inability to differentiate between 8 oz by weight and 8 oz by volume), I decided that my next recipe would be a little simpler and more classic.
15 March 2009
Sweetheart Kölsch
5 gallons, 60 minute boil4.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
2.0 lbs Wheat Dried Malt Extract (60 min)2.0 oz Vanguard Hops [54.4% AA] (60 min)
1.0 oz Sterling Hops [6% AA] (5 min)1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)
White Labs German Ale/Kölsch Yeast WLP029
4 oz corn sugar (bottling)
———
Create a yeast starter two days in advance.
Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to a boil. Turn off heat and add liquid and dry malt extracts while stirring.
Bring back to a boil. Add Vanguard hops.
At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.
At 5 minutes, add Sterling hops
Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.
Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.
Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.
Bottle. Age for two weeks.
Originally, since I like being witty and giving things weird names, I wanted to come up with an alliterative name for the kölsch. I had already come across one named Kölnnel Klink Kölsch, which I thought was pretty darn klever (ha! I crack myself up). The closest I came was calling my brew the Kurnitz Kölsch, after Grandma Kurnitz, the character I played in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. However, Grandma Kurnitz is extremely bitter and harsh, and that’s not what I was going for in my kölsch, so I renamed it the Sweetheart Kölsch, under the guise that you would share a bottle or two with your sweetheart. Collective “Aw!” on the count of 3 … 2 … 1 … oh nevermind. Back to the beer.
We just recently bottled this beer, so a tasting post should be around the bend in a week or two. My hope is that this beer is balanced and refreshing. Sure, it might not make you fall off your seat with a burst of flavor, but at least you’ll stay seated with no beer spilled.
Sounds like a good beer. I’m looking forward to your tasting notes. How is the color? Did you find that boiling the extract for the full 60 minutes darkened the beer. Color wise, I’ve been having pretty good luck doing late additions when I do extract batches, but it is a pain in the ass.
I poured a bottle today to check if it had finished carbonating (unfortunately that answer is no), and was able to get my first good look at the color. It’s a bit hazy, but we don’t have the equipment to properly lager, so that’s to be expected. The color looks right, but just a smidge darker than what an all-grain brewer would get. I’ve never tried late-addition extract—how late do you put it in?
Tasting notes should be up within 2 weeks I think.
When I’m brewing an all extract beer I’ll usually dump in 1/4 to 1/2 the extract as the water is heating towards boil (you’ve got to give your hops something to work with) and then add the rest at flame-out. If I’m doing a partial mash beer then I put all the extract in at flame-out. It’s kind of a messy operation, but I’ve always had darkening problems with lighter colored extract brews. Doing the late addition thing has helped with that. I should mention, that I only do the late additions when I’m brewing pale beers. When I’m doing anything darker than an amber I just put it all in at the beginning.
[...] I decided to take a walk on the tame side, and write a recipe for a beer that didn’t have 18 adjuncts, 5 varieties of hops, and a [...]
[...] Next, we headed to my Uncle Larry and Aunt Susan’s house. First off, they’re two of my favorite people, and second, the moment you meet them they’ll become your favorite people, too! We planned to have a BBQ with them, and my folks drove down from Syracuse to join. We shared some of our homebrews and got good reviews — my dad, a light-lager kind of guy, even told me that he really liked the Kölsch. [...]