After reading through dozens of recipes, I've decided a variant of this is going to be my next batch. I've only brewed one batch of home brew, so this will be batch #2. My first batch was a LME, with steeping grains, an American IPA kit from The Brew Hut, here in Colorado. It's carbonating in the bottles right now and should be starting to come around in another week or two.
I plan to try my hand at BIAB with this recipe. Got my voile bag from Jeff Omundson at bagbrewer.com:
http://www.bagbrewer.com/index.html It seems like a sturdily designed product that I'm anxious to use. I actually found him through a thread here at HBT. Since I haven't done BIAB yet, I'm not sure what my efficiency is will be, so I placed it at 72% in Beersmith.
Here are the ingredients I went and picked up today for a 5-gallon batch of this, which I'm going to name "Mandarin Muncher Kolsch." All grains were run through the grain mill twice, with the flaked wheat left out of the mill.
5-pounds Pale Malt (2-Row) US (2.0 SRM)
2.5-pounds Pale Malt (2-Row) Belgian (3.0 SRM) (I thought this would be interesting in combination with the US 2-Row.)
1-pound White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)
1-pound Flaked Wheat (1.6 SRM)
0.5-pounds Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.19-pounds (3-ounces) Acidulated Malt (3.0 SRM)
0.5-oz. Hallertauer (4.5%) pellet, 60-minutes
0.25-oz. Hallertauer (4.5%) pellet, 20-minutes
0.25-oz. Tettnanger (4.8%) pellet, 20-minutes
0.5-oz. Tettnanger (4.8%) pellet, 10-minutes
???[0.5-oz. Cascade (8.0%), 10-minutes]???
1.5-oz. Dehydrated Orange Peel, 10-minutes
2-grams Seeds of Paradise, crushed, 10-minutes
Wyeast 2575 Kolsch II, will make a starter, then harvest for future use.
I also bought 1-ounce of Cascade pellets (8.0%) that I bought that I'm trying to decide if I want to use at all? I'm wondering if I added 0.5-oz. of it near the end of the boil, maybe around the 10-minute mark, if it'd complement the orange peel and seeds of paradise a bit without going overboard on the bitterness? I do like hops, but I realize that Kolsch standards are in the 20-30 IBU range, which this would be (mid 20s). I added the 3-oz. of acidulated malt in hopes of adding a bit of interest to the finish, without it being apparent.
The only thing that will likely happen outside of the Kolsch style guidelines is the potential for the ABV to be above 5.2%, the upper limit for Kolsch. Again though, I have no idea, since this will be my first BIAB.
I was originally going to go with an ale yeast like US-05 or something similar, but saw they had recently gotten in some 2575, and thought I'd give liquid yeast a try, since my first batch of beer used Lallemand Nottingham. It's a good excuse to break out my new stir plate and try my hand at a starter.
Any comments or input on this recipe are appreciated. (I also started a separate thread on this.)