Kolsch -- First Attempt

[bilgerat]

I am not quite ready to start all grain brewing so went searching for a partial mash recipe
I have
2.5kg German Pilsner Malt
1.5 kg light pilsner malt extract
80g Tettanger German Hops
Wyeast 2565 Kolsc yeast.

Any refinements etc most welcome
Gary

[emnpaul]

G'day Bilgerat,

Looks pretty good so far.

I was reading about Kolsh's just the other day.They typically contain between 10 and 20% wheat so that might be worth considering by way of refinement. It will also help with head retention. Allegedly.

Another thought. If you are going to go to the trouble of mashing 2.5Kg of grain why not mash a little bit more and leave out the extract altogether and make your brew to a smaller volume? There's nothing to say you have to make 23 Litres per batch.

Cheers
Paul

[bilgerat]

Well
I have just finished my first Kolsch partial mash using the above recipe, I fine tuned it a little using beersmith, ie cut back a little on the extract and only used 60g of hops.
I mashed the grain in a muslim bag and strained it through a collander, it passed the iodine test so I assume the mash was ok, the sparge was done using water at 80C poured over the muslim bag as it sat in a collander over my stock pot, the final wort has a consistency of soup with lots of suspended bits in it however the OG was 1.053 which is within the range that beersmith came up with.
Gary

[earle]

I'm a bit worried that your going to be the target of a jihad for using a muslim bag instead of a muslin one.

[barrelboy]

I had a good chuckle on that one Earle. +1
Cheers BB

[bilgerat]

A lovely drop, must be the muslim in it.

[SaazGorilla]

I bottled my first attempt at a Kolsch 4 months ago and it has really improved in that time. Initially I was really worried about it, not being used to the flavour of Spalt hops I spose, but their flavour has since subsided (in a good way).

Recipe:
Tin of Coopers European Lager
1.5 kg Pilsner Malt Extract (dried)
250g Best Pils and Victory Grain mix (half/half) "boiled" at 65 for 1 hour.
20g Spalt at 20min and 20g Spalt at flameout
Safbrew S05
Fermented for 2 weeks at 18 degrees, Racked then bottled.
(OG 1046) (FG 1012)