American Pale Wheat with Citrus Zest - Tasting Notes

This is my latest American Pale Wheat Beer.  These are beer utilizing American hops which produce a Citrus character - they typically use large amounts of late hops to impart a profound hop flavor.  To take this one step further, I decided to add Citrus zest (Orange and Grapefruit) to this beer.

To do this I mixed sugar and zest which extracts the flavor from the zest and then added this to the keg to kick off a second fermentation which carbonates the keg.  I used a fairly amount of fruit (2 oranges and 2 grapefruit) on this batch to be conservative - didn't want to create an over the top kind of flavor (read on to see the results).

Anyhow, the beer has been on tap for three weeks now.  The carbonation was a bit high initially with the priming but it's now pouring nicely.  I've been drinking it quite a bit and have been getting worried that the keg will kick soon so time to do an official tasking for the record. 

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Citrus and pine aroma are pretty strong - can't really say if I'm smelling hop of citrus fruit zest here.  Fairly rich smell.  May get a bit of sweet bready malt mixed in there as well.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 1 finger head that slowly fades down to a thin ring.  Leaves some lacing on the glass.  The beer is golden and not quite clear.
• Flavor:
• The beer has some fruity flavors and piney hop flavors up front and the finish has a medium level bitterness.  There is some light malt flavor in the mix here as well.  The balance of the beer is pretty strongly slanted towards hop flavors and bitterness.  The bitterness lingers a bit longer than the hop flavor here.
• Mouthfeel:
• Light bodied and pretty dry.  Has a bit of a rough edge to the bitterness but still pretty nice drinking
• Overall:
• It's a pretty nice drinking beer with a nice hop focused flavor.  It isn't the most complex beer I've made and the hop character is fairly mild as far as these beers go.  Only going by my imperfect memory I'd say this beer isn't quite as hoppy as some of my other recent examples.  I also think a slightly higher staring gravity could be helpful as think it could have done with just a bit more balance to the malt.  Still, I'm happy to drink every drop of this keg.  As for the citrus, I'd say it certainly doesn't overwhelm the beer used at these levels - I think I'll try this approach again at some point using a bit more.

Kölsch

Kölsch is a German Style of beer which is fermented at ale temperatures and then cold stored for extended periods like a lager.  It is kind of a hybrid style between ale and lager.  I've had this commercially a couple times but it is rare to see in the US (unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to try a real German one).  I've been considering trying one for quite a while now - that day has finally arrived.

I decided to use a recipe by the famous homebrewer Gordon Strong for this:  Killer Kölsch.  It's a simple grainbill of Pilsner with just a touch of Vienna and Caravienne for a bit of color and a restrained level of hopping with low-Alpha Acid Noble hops (I simplified this a bit for the sake of using up hops in 1 oz increments).  I'm using Wyeast's Kölsch yeast for this one per the recipe.

I opted for a standard mash with this beer (the recipe called for steps through the conversion range).  The beer is supposed to have a OG of 1.046 and then ferment out to the low 1.01s for somewhere around 4-5% ABV.  I typically plan for around 70% efficiency - somehow with this batch I ended up getting 86% which is an all time high for me.  I suspect I had an error in weighing out the grain as the most likely explanation as the process I used wasn't really any different than other beers (served as a reminder that I'm not immune from mistakes here in almost my 8th year of brewing).  I ended up topping up the beer with some spring water to get to a 1.050 OG.

I'm going to let it ferment out for a few weeks and then will lager for a month at near-freezing temperature before kegging.  This will be a 6 gal batch of beer.  Not exactly sure why, but I have a very high degree of certainty that I'm going to enjoy this beer very much (like with my last Pilsner).  These beers go very quickly on tap which is unfortunate given how much time they take to make - I may start making 2 kegs worth of these beers going forward and then condition in the keg rather than fermentor.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 10 lbs Pilsner
• 4 oz Vienna
• 4 oz Caravienne (used Crystal 10L)
• 2 oz Acid
• Hops:
• 0.5 oz Crystal (Pellet, 4.22% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz German Hallertauer (Pellet, 4% AA) at 30 min
• 0.5 oz Crystal (Pellet, 4.22% AA) at 5 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 2565 German Kölsch
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 3 gal tap water
• 1 tsp CaCl

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 152 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 75 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 68 F
• Primary Duration:
• 3 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 4 weeks at 36 F 

Results:

• OG:
• 1.050 (Target 1.046)
• Efficiency:
• 86% (Target 71%)
• FG:
• 1.008 (Target 1.011)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 83% (Target 75%)
• ABV:
• 5.5% (Target 4.6%)

Brewing Notes:

• 12/18/21 - Built a yeast starter (100 g of DME and 1 L of spring water) and set it up on the stir plate to propagate over night
• 12/19/21 - Brewday - from 11:30 AM to 4:45 PM - Including setup and cleanup
• Heated 8 gal of strike water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain - added CaCl to it

• Moved 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled until the system had stabilized at 162 F.  Stopped the RIMS.
• Stirred in the grain until all dough balls were eliminated.  Let this sit for 10 min to settle.
• Turned on the RIMS and cycled at 152 F for 50 more min

• Heated 7 gal of strike water to 180 F for the sparge
• Did part 1 of sparge.  Fly sparged until 5 gal had been collected.  Started heating this once 3 gal had been collected and had at a boil soon after sparge was done.
• Added water top top off the mash and let sit for 10 min.  Then continued the sparge until we were up to 9 gal.  Did this last part slowly to not break the boil.
• Added the bittering hops at this point and boiled for 60 min
• At 30 min, I added the second batch of hops
• I forgot the Irish Moss this time
• I decided to extend the boil by 15 min to get down to the desired 6 gal
• At 5 min, I added the final hops and the wort chiller to sanitize
• At flame out, I chilled the beer down to 70 F
• Transferred the beer to the fermentor, letting it fall a foot or so to aerate.  Pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.056.  This is 86% efficiency - much higher than I'd expected. I really want a beer that ends up at less than 5% ABV so I'm going to steal 1 gal of this beer to top up some of my Sour Blond Fermenters and I'll add 1 gal of spring water to replace it.  This, in theory, should get me to the 1.046 OG I'd wanted but in practice only got me to 1.050 (which is close enough)
• Moved the beer to my chest freezer set to 68 F to ferment
• 12/20/21 - The beer has formed a krausen by the afternoon of the next day
• 1/27/21 - The beer still has krausen on the surface.  I think my SS brewtech fermenter may no longer be holding pressure somehow since I have no bubbling in the airlock - may have over pressurized it during transfer of my last beer (Citrus Pale Ale)
• 1/9/22 - Chilled the beer down to 36 F for the lagering period
• 2/5/22 - Added gelatin to fine the beer.  I'm going to give it 1 more week before kegging
• 2/13/22 - Kegged the beer today after over a month of laggering.  Measured the FG as 1.008.  From the few pins of extra I had I can say it's a really tasty beer.
• 7/17/22 - Tasting Notes - This is a light, easy drinking beer, with some very nice flavor and aroma.  Flavors are fairly mild but with a a bit of focus you can appreciate that it has a fair amount of complexity.  The style is said to be differentiated from a more standard lager by a fruity character - this isn't something I picked out in my more casual enjoyment of the beer (where the beer seemed to have a lot of the standard lager fermentation character) but on closer inspection I would say this beer does offer a subtle fruitiness.