A pretty standard Kolsch recipe but with Wakatu hops (which isn’t actually all that ‘wacky’ as they are a hallertau variety!). This is a lovely refreshing lager like beer that is perfect served cold on a hot day, being a Kolsch you don’t need to ferment at cold temps either so a much quicker and simpler process than traditional lager methods. It will benefit from a couple of weeks lagering in the bottle/keg though.

Batch size: 20 Litres

Brewhouse efficiency: 82%
OG: 1.047
FG: 1.009
IBUs: 30
ABV: 4.9%
EBC: 7.2

MALT/GRAIN BILL

3.2 kg Pilsner Malt
0.4 kg Munich
0.1 kg CaraHell (Caramalt)

HOPS & ADDITIONS SCHEDULE

30g Wakatu at 60 minutes
30g Wakatu at 5 minutes
10g Tettnang at 5 minutes

YEAST

Crossmyloof Kolsch

Mash at 65c

Ferment at 17c

This one was reviewed by Rusty Homebrew, check out the video below, he seemed to like it!

I brewed this one across the May Day bank holiday weekend and have been very pleased with the result.  The guys have also given me some good feedback on it too, which is always nice.

The plan was to brew an English Bitter, using Jester hops.  I hadn’t brewed many traditional English styles before, so it was nice to brew something new to the repertoire.  I did a bit of reading up at some existing recipes to see what sort of grain bill I would need and was pleased to see that most use a fairly simple one, so I built on based on what I already had in and what I wanted out of the end product.

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I made this a few months back as a golden ale for the summer, it was a development of the Olicana recipe I did previously but with a couple of classic English hops thrown in and a slight tweak to the grain bill to add a touch more colour and depth. I also used it as a test recipe for Mangrove Jacks Liberty Bell yeast which performed very well and really helped to bring out the fruity notes in this brew.

Blending the lager and pale malt seems to work really well for keeping the beer light and crisp, I wanted a deeper golden colour than on the previous brew but without excess sweetness from caramel grains so I added a little pale chocolate malt for colour adjustment and to hopefully add some subtle depth to the grist. Hopping was classic English combinations in the boil with Target to bitter and EKG and Challenger for late additions, I decided to dry hop with Olicana to add some extra fruity aromas on the nose.

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After jonesing for a brew day for a while, (I look after my little boy a lot of the time as the wife works 12 hour shifts, I dont get to do them often) I managed to have a brew morning yesterday, and after some careful deliberation with my brewing brother HisDudeness, I decided to push the malt envelope (for me anyways) and see if I could deal with the thin body issues Ive been having with recent beers…

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