Cracked Car Kolsch Part Deux

When last we left...well, reread Part One.

All I can say about our first attempt to brew the kolsch is this, "When you fall off the keg, you gotta get right back on!"



So, after another trip out to The Thirsty Brewer for another round of supplies, Bill and I gave it another shot.

Being of one mind and determined vision, we powered thru the brewing process in an efficient--and mostly sober--manner. This time around, we decided to use a plastic 5 gallon water bottle from my water delivery service. The best part, we wouldn't even need to clean it back out when we were done with it. One quick rinse, and then right out on my front walk to be returned with all my other empty bottles. (We have done this a couple times now, and I have yet to hear from the water company asking me what the hell the dried crud is in the jugs.)

So, we finished up brewing and it was then time to cool down the wort. If only we had remembered to get a couple bags of ice. What to do? What to do?

Thankfully, I'm an idea man, Chuck:



We raided the fridge, and got the beer up to the five gallon mark with ice, some Hello Kitty icepacks and cold water. Now it was time to sit back and get the wort down to 75 degrees. About 2 hours later that night (a school night, I might add), we were only down to 80 degrees. Throwing caution to the wind, I pitched the yeast and went to bed, but I left the beer in good hands:



We brewed on a Thursday, and the fermentation hit it's stride on Sunday. The initial overflow was fairly chunky and bubbling like crazy. It was only after a few days that I was able to switch over to the airgap on the top of the carboy. Fermenation continued on for another 4 days or so after that, and then calmed down.

At this point, let me take a moment to go over a couple of things. Brewclub has been an awesome experience. The social aspect, the science aspect, the manly aspect and the drinking aspect. All good. You know the one thing that sucks about Brewclub? Scrubbing the damn labels off the bottles. Sierra Nevada labels came right off after a good soak--some of the others?...not so much. Those guys went right into the recycle bin.

Once all the labels were off, I mixed up a batch of sanitizer (I used iodophor, and was pretty happy), and basically submerged all the bottles and equipment for a few minutes. After that, I started going a little crazy and sanitized everything I could think of: my water bottles, some old growlers I had, the cat.



We heated up the priming sugar in a small pot of water and added it to the batch right before bottling. Not only is this an effective way to help ensure the sugar is evenly dispersed, it also helps to bring the batch closer back to the original five gallons (replacing what we lost during fermentation overflow.) Did it get the beer all the way back up to 5 gallons? We shall revisit this topic in the future blog: Why does my Cracked Car Kolsch Keep Cracking?

After a little toast--it tasted like warm flat beer, so we were pleased--we bottled the beer and packed them away for a two week nap.

As for the final result:



Liquid goodness and oral fireworks. We were very happy with the final product. It still packed a bit of a punch (somewhere in the high 5% range) and it had much more flavor than I would have expected for a 'lawnmower pils'. The color was spot on and the clarity was much better than I thought it would be. There was still a bit of sediment in the bottle, but no floaties swirling after the pour.

It was definitely a thumbs up for the Cracked Car Kolsch...despite our best efforts to sabotage it.