Strawberry Kolsch Round 1

I'm trying to go back and document some of the older brews...so this post has us going back to late May 2010...our (Ed, Liz, and I) first go at Strawberry Kolsch. 

Clearly I'm putting some sweat equity into this batch.  The next year when we went strawberry picking, and we had to overhear this guy talk about Freezer Jam for 2 hours...a running joke between Liz and I.

This picture was taken about half way through our haul...we actually went back the next year to remake this in 2 batches. Having so many berries on one another starts the bruising process pretty early, so upon getting home, I was quick to sort out the good from the bad, washed and pureed the worse off ones, and froze them so I'd be ready to go when we brewed the next weekend.

We originally had the intent of making a strawberry  beer using a lighter wheat beer like an American Wheat or even a Pale Ale.  The guy at the homebrew store suggested strawberries might pair well with a Kolsch.  We were at the Falls Church Homebrew store, which is a bit small and claustrophobic, we so eagerly took his advice.  It turns out he gave us a Weizenbier kit with a Kolsch yeast, since there was no Kolsch kit in the store.  This ended up working even better than a traditional Kolsch kit, as we confirmed the next year when we made both a 5 gallon batch of the Weizenbier kit with Kolsch yeast and a traditional Kolsch kit.  It produced a much sweeter product than a spicier tasting Kolsch kit would have produced on its own.  We pureed about 3 pounds of strawberries for the primary.  For the secondary, we used about a pound of halved strawberries boiled with lemon slices.  The lemon is supposed to add some sourness to the strawberry taste, making the taste even stronger.  We started the secondary about 7 days in, and then let that sit about 7 more days before bottling with some honey and priming sugar.

 The picture on the left is soon after fermentation started and the second picture shows the secondary. You can see the reddish tent in the secondary.  This batch was great, and a big hit with our friends.  The next year, we made a double batch, playing around with things a bit more, trying to amp up the alcohol content a bit, varying the ingredients like I mentioned earlier, and just trying to refine the flavor.  We didn't match the original awesomeness of this batch, but we were happy to have 10 gallons of it this time around.