When Thornbridge has their free shipping offer on in January we took advantage and I got myself a case each of Jaipur and Halcyon, and my wife got a case of their Koln-style beer Tzara. I stumbled across a blog post on the Thornbridge Brewers Blog describing the beer, so I thought I’d have a go, since summer is heading towards us. The recipe details gave me a rough idea – mainly pilsenser malt, 5-10% light wheat malt, and a “dash” of carapils. Hop-wise, I’ve gone for Perle to bitter it to the middle of BeerSmith2’s Kolsch style range of IBUs, and the blog said this about aroma hopping:
Hops must also be classically German – traditionally, Perle or Spalter Select are used for bitterness (we went with Perle), Tettnanger and/or Hallertau Tradition added at the end of boil for aroma. Our Rolec Hopnik is filled with the same amount of hops as a brew of Kipling with a combination of both. The nature of these noble hops used will not overpower the essence of the brew.
So I’ve (hopefully!) done similar, by doing a 20 minute steep of Tettnanger and Hallertau. Yeast is a fresh vial of WLP029, and I intend to ferment at 18C, then lager at 4C dropping to -1C.
Brewday details:
- Length: 27 litres
- OG: 1.044
- FG:
- ABV:
BeerXml File: Tzara
Tzara
- Style: Kölsch
- Length: 25 litres
- Yeast: German Ale/Kolsch (White Labs WLP029)
- OG: 1.048
- FG: 1.009
- ABV: 5.2 %
- Colour: 6.2 EBC
- Bitterness: 26.6 IBUs
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bohemian Pilsner (Weyermann) | 3 | 4.499 | 88 |
| Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) | 4 | 0.399 | 8 |
| Carapils (Weyermann) | 4 | 0.199 | 4 |
| Total | 5.099 | ||
Hops:
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perle | 9.6 | Leaf | 15 | 60 |
| Hallertauer | 4.8 | Leaf | 30 | Aroma |
| Tettnang | 4.5 | Leaf | 30 | Aroma |
Comments:
Since this beer is best made with soft water, and ours is very hard, I had a trip to a local aquarium shop this morning to fill my jerry cans with RO water. A post on Jim’s Beer Kit Forum by Aleman said this about Kolsch:
Personally for a Kolsch I would want a liquor with about 100 ppm Calcium, and a higher Chloride level than Sulphate (about twice as high) . . . certainly I would not want to be adding CRS or gypsum to it. If you go with boiling I would suggest that you drop the gypsum addition (and the table salt) and just use 8g of Calcium Chloride this will add those all important calcium ions, and boost the chloride levels. There should be sufficient magnesium derived from the malt, but adding 2g of magnesium sulphate should not do any harm to the sulphate levels.
So I ended up putting these in as my target on the Water Treatment Calculator, and got 3.5g gypsum in the mash, and 11.3g calcium chloride and 2g epsom salts in the copper (for 39 litres of water).
I dropped it into my FV when it had reached 20C, found I had 27 litres in a 33 litre FV and decided that when I add the starter that was more than a bit too close to the rim of the bucket, so I transferred it to one of my 45 litre FVs. I regard this as bonus aeration! Waiting for it to drop to 18C before pitching – the starter is in the fridge with the wort so both should be the same temperature when I do, which is likely to be tomorrow morning.
2013-04-06: I rose it up from 18C to 20C a couple of days ago for a bit of a diacetyl rest. It’s been at 1.008 since then, so fermentation if definitely finished. It’s tasting good, albeit with a little butterscotch (hence the rest). I’ll give it a few more days like this, then the plan is to drop it into keg and bottles and lager it for a few weeks at 4C, dropping to -1C to finish. I’m not planning on fining it, but we’ll see how it looks in a couple of weeks!
2013-04-09: Dropped into keg, plus 28 bottles of assorted sizes. Still in the fridge at 4C.
