German Brewing

Totally forgot to put this in the main post, too.

Has anyone "cask" conditioned and served their Kolsch? From what I understand Kolschbier is carbed (via spunding valve), lagered, and served in the barrels. I was thinking about using a polypin to carbonate, lager, and serve in to see if it has a noticeable affect.

I wonder where the wheat addition comes from in Kolsch because the beer is often described as a cousin to the helles. It's basically a helles, to me, with an ale yeast instead of lager yeast and treated nearly the same way as helles otherwise.

I brewed a Kolsch 2 weeks ago and did 62C for 60 minutes and 72C for 60 minutes. I wonder if 60 minutes is necessary for the 62C rest.

I'd ferment at 15C (59F) for the bulk of fermentation, then slowly drop it near freezing. I am not sure there'd be a benefit to raising it since it's already warm enough. I raised mine, however, to about 18C for the last week.

I never understood wheat either. It's a helles with higher hops and an ale yeast to me.

I have been trying to track down a source for the wheat additions (even emailed a few different breweries trying to investigate, nothing there). Most sources (even legit ones from Germany) cite that some examples have wheat in them. I am beginning to think it might just be a cyclical quotation, where one brewery had wheat in it at one point and then that example became quoted again and again.

I personally really like wheat in there, so I tend to brew it with 7-20% wheat.

As for the rests, I am always worried about the enzymes denaturing. Kai's experiments on enzyme activity show that most of you alpha and beta are pretty much gone after an hour at 67 degrees, so I keep the mash short and sweet to maximize potential enzyme activity. I still retain a 85-86% attenuation from w34/70 when doing a 30/60 schedule.

Some theorize that Helles (and thus kolsch) was actually derived from hefe. It makes sense they kept a portion of wheat, especially enough for that nice, thick, mousey head. Kolsch is probably more closely related to hefe than helles, IMO.

The RHG allows wheat in ales so it's possible some authentic examples use it but truthfully I personally don't see the point.

If I were to brew a kolsch tomorrow, I would probably use 95% Pilsner malt, 4% carahell, and 1% caramunich. I'd brew it to 11.5 Plato OG, hop it to about 24 IBUs with a good dose of FWH and maybe some at 30 or 15. The yeast is really what makes the style.

Throw in 5% carafoam, and I'd brew that too