More Kolsch!

I wouldn’t normally brew two nearly identical beers so close together, but I was really enjoying the last batch of kolsch when it kicked. Seeing how it’s still officially spring for a few more weeks, bring on “Spring Kolsch” round two.

For this batch I’m going to try a some of the changes I wanted to experiment with last time: Lower alcohol, and a hop bill of 100% Hallertau Mittelfrüh

This recipe is pushing the limits of what the BJCP would consider a kolsch. Compared to the traditional styles guides, this beer is a bit too light on alcohol, and a bit too heavy with the hops.

I’m not planning to send this to any competitions though. I just want to brew the ideal interpretation of koslch for my tastes.

One of my favorite styles these days is mixed fermentation tart saison. Earlier in the year I made my first attempt at brewing one myself. For that beer, I blended about 20% kettle soured berliner weisse to a saison that had brett, but no souring bacteria added. It isn’t finished yet, but from some gravity samples I think it’s going to end up being tasty, but not as tart as I expected from my blending tests.

For my second go at the style, I’m going to use a full range of brett and souring bacteria. To hopefully get a light tartness instead of full-on souring, I’m going to mash low and wait until a few days into fermetation before adding the sour bugs.

Update: After some intermediate samples I decided this beer could use some adjuncts to make things a bit more interesting. On the theme of native North American ingredients, I’m going to split the beer onto cranberries (cooked down with some red wine), blueberries, and local honey*. I’ll bottle what remains as-is.

This is batch number two of my IPA experiment series. In the first batch I tested out some new equipment and techniques. The beers were some of the best IPAs I’ve ever made, but they were very hard to tell apart. It felt like I had one beer taking up two taps.

Maybe a bad sign for my motivation for testing small tweaks, but for this round I feel like having a litte fun and brewing two significantly different IPAs just to compare the hop blends.

I have ideas of what hops I like, but it’ll be nice to have two equally fresh beers to taste at the same time.

This batch continues the deep dive I’ve been taking into mixed fermentation brewing over the last 6 months. I have a bunch of sours in the pipeline now and I’d like to get some funky, non-sour, brett beers going. I brewed my first brett saison a few weeks ago. This will be my second attempt in the broad style of funky saison.

Watching the 10 year retrospective from The Mad Fermentationist’s yearly dark saison project was inspirational. I’m hoping to keep up my own similar series. I think I’ll probably take inspiration from Mike and friends the first couple years, and then strike out with my own experimental brews as I get more comfortable with this style of funky brewing.

One of the standout beers from that tasting was year four’s American Farmhouse Currant Dark Saison. I’m going to brew that recipe for the first shot at this style.

The last six months have been busy with weird beer brewing. I’m now six batches into brewing sours with no finished products yet!

Today I topped up and sampled a few of them.

Vitus Vinifera is the scientific name for the species that contains most varieties of wine grapes.

This “Saison Vinifera” will blend funky tart saison, oak, and wine.

A large portion of my homebrewing over the last six months has been focused on trying to emulate the great mixed fermentation beers coming out of my favorite local brewery, Sapwood Cellars. Two of those beers were delicious tart saisons that they released in fall 2019:

No Beginnings was a pale saison with Brettanomyces, aged in Sauvignon Blanc wine barrels.

I’d be willing to bet that First Blush started life as a similar base beer to No Beginnings, but it was fermented with chardonnay pomace, and finished on whole Cabernet Franc grapes. It is rosé in appearance and the flavor has a unique light, tart fruitiness.

My plan is to brew a batch of funky pale saison, split it half in secondary, and see how close to each of these I can get

I’ve been homebrewing for nearly 10 years, but in that time I’ve only made one German beer, my recent Berliner Weisse. This neglect of the German styles needs to be rectified!

I love kolsch, and I’ve been happy to see it gaining a small but significant popularity in the US in the last decade. I think the only reason I haven’t made one is just that I’ve been distracted making lots of English bitters/milds and Belgain wits to satisfy my low bitterness session beer needs. The time for Kolsch has arrived.

When making a new style for the first time, I like to go with a trusted recipe. This beer is very close to The Mad Fermentationist’s Fall Kolsch. His example is on the bitter end for this style, but I think that will be to my liking.

Since it’s the end of March, not early September, I’ll call my version “Spring Kolsch”

One of my brewing goals for 2020 is to improve the quality of my IPAs. I feel like this far into the brewing game, I should have a little more to show for it when I make my favorite style. They’re rarely bad, but they don’t wow as often as I’d like.

To that end I’m going to be doing a series of experiments this year where make two similar beers at the same time, with just one variable changed. I hope this will improve my process, one tweak at at time.

For this brew, I’m trying out some new hardware and techniques that I’ll use for the rest of my upcoming experiments.

It’s sour time again! This type of beer has a long turnaround time, so I’m trying to get a lage pipeline going this winter. Hopefully next year I can start having somewhat regular releases of finished sours.

This batch is inspired by Sapwood Cellars Upper Bound: Apricot. It was the first first apricot sour I ever tried, and I thought it was fantastic. One of my favorite releases from them so far.

This is the recipe for my Flanders Red solera project as brewed in late 2019.

It’s a slightly Americanized take on the style, based on the “Wine Barrel Flemish Red” from American Sour Beers. I may change it a bit over the years as I see how the beer develops. I’ll link to any new posts related to this recipe in the notes.