Kolsch 'N Honey

I'm sure most of you are probably saying to yourself..."what the hell is Kolsch?" And the reason most people have never heard of this beer is because the only place you can brew it commercially is in the German city of Koln. Apparently brewers there have some unique methods, yeast strains, etc. and Germany is fairly proud and protective of their beer and allow brewers to basically patent a brew.

So obviously this batch isnt a true blood Kolsch but hopefully its close. Its another pilsner-esque ale (like EDA) that is light, smooth and crisp. Northern Brewer sells it as a great summer 'lawn mower beer'. This was a really easy batch...no grains to steep, just 6lbs of extract, 2oz Hallertau Hops, and 1lb of Honey at the end of the boil. This will be a nice change of pace from the last few batches I have done. The last four batches or so have been in the 1-2 month turn around range whereas this Kolsch should be good to drink in about 5 weeks tops.

Adding the Wort

*UPDATE*: Holy Crap this has been in secondary for a long time. Probably a month longer than I had anticipated. But that has happened before and I did not complain about that batch...far from it. This time around I was a bit concerned though, it has been very wet up here the last few weeks and you could tell the basement was getting a bit 'ripe'. I was worried the airlock wouldn't be able to hold off the additional 'basement musk'.

But it appears as if my gear did what it was supposed to. I tasted while bottling, like usual, and it looks like this is going to be another winner. Its a bit darker than I had thought it would be but I think thats just because I dont have the ability to do a 'full boil'. i.e. boiling a full 5 gallon batch of wort. You need one of those propane jet engine burners to boil that amount of water at once, which I dont have, and you typically get slightly darker brews when you make more concentrated wort (only boiling 1-2 gallons).

Lucky for me I don't really care about color so much. This batch is nice and smooth and the honey added a nice twang of sweetness. Its a bit weaker than some of my other batches but that was the intention. Just a nice easy-to-drink summer beer...Ready just in time for a camping trip up in the north country.

Almost Fall...next batch is back to the strong stuff, batch after that is my first time experimenting with my own recipe (probably with some help from the local brew store)

Stay tuned.