Centennial Pils Pale

Kölsch is a style, as my good friend Ted has commented before, that can go by the wayside in the homebrewery.  For me, the lagering time required means that by the time I usually start thinking about having one around I'm already weeks or months behind the eight ball.  Add in a lack of a proper lagering setup that greatly increases the difficulty of doing right by this beer as the temperature rises in spring and summer, and pretty soon the whole plan is a wash.  This year, though, I made plans well in advance to finally brew one near the end of the school year for summer quaffing.  The grains and hops were collected, and I put together everything for a starter of Charlie P's Cry Havoc (on Ted's recommendation).

And then the last two months of the school year came on like a storm of hellfire.  It finally abated at the beginning of May, but summer travel plans loomed ever closer, leaving no time for lagering and scarcely time enough for fermentation.  How does the saying go about the best laid plans? So, like any good homebrewer or icebreaker captain, I altered course.  I reserved some of the Vienna I had for the next brewday and added in some Munich to up the maltiness and colour a bit, and swapped the Hallertaus for Centennials, shooting for a Two-Hearted Ale hop character.  So we have an American pale ale with a German malt bill.  An increase in the boil time should have removed the DMS precursors in the pils, keeping anything untoward from forming during the hop stand.  Leaving off dry hopping made it very feasible to have this beer in the bottle comfortably ahead of our trip.  I had my first of these just a few days ago; it's crisp, bready, bitter, and doesn't betray my original intentions for it to be an entirely different beer.

Centennial Pils Pale

Batch size: 5.1 gallons
Projected OG: 1.050
Projected SRM: 3.9
Projected IBU: 28.6
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 81%

Grains
58.8% - 5 lb Weyermann Pils
23.5% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Munich Type 2
17.7% - 1.5 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna

Hops
.5 oz Centennial (8.7%) (120 min)
1.5 oz Centennial (10 min)
1 oz Centennial (0 min - 30-min whirlpool/hop stand)

Yeast
WLP862 Cry Havoc - 2.5 l starter (made 14 April 2013)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
11 qts RO water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Epsom salts
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 4 May 2013
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.6P (1.038)

Bottled: 16 May 2013
FG: 1.010
ABV: 5.0%

Bottled with 4.4 oz table sugar.