The Averagely Perfect Kölsch - "Kölsch-Vid 19" 'How We Got There' thread

Question: kegging is not in the cards for me. So, speaking bottling, what would be a reasonable practice for cold conditioning / bottling? Would one bottle after primary fermentation was complete, let the bottles carb @ 70 degrees, and then cold condition?

Thanks!

 

I'm guessing that the idea was to do primary as normal, bottle condition, and then lager in bottles.

 

You could lager in a secondary (or even primary) and then bottle, if you have a way to keep O2 from sucking back while crashing.

Or you could bottle and then lager, but you'd always stir up at least a little of what had settled out when you pour. That's a reason you don't find bottle conditioned commercial lagers. Now, a Kölsch isn't a lager per se (i.e. it's not fermented with lager yeast), but lagering is how it becomes so clear.

 

I know it's not an ideal situation, but I have to roll with what I've got. Thanks for the input!

 

This is how I used to bottle lagers. I didn't brew many before I began kegging, but I liked the results. You will have yeast sediment in your bottles and it will take a while for that to settle out. When you pour from the bottle, you'll want to take care not to disturb the sediments, so try to get comfortable leaving some beer behind in the bottle.

 

Yup, that can indeed be done.

Cheers!

 

You're much younger than I thought.