What is your intended grain bill?
I don't have my notes handy, so this mostly from memory: In my Kolsch I have
8# Pilsner malt
4# Maris Otter
1# 20L Crystal or Caramel Malt
1# Munich
Scale that back a bit if you're doing more traditional methods; I'm doing single-infusion and that recipe is overbuilt by about 15 percent to account for dead space loss in the MT, losses to trub, hoses, CF chiller, and so on.
I know a guy
)) who's a native German; asked him for a scathing review of my Kolsch. He thought it was delicious, and his compatriots wanted to know when I was bringing a keg over.
But--he said it's not a Kolsch. Why? Too much flavor. He says a traditional Kolsch in Germany is much like our BMC macro beers here. I didn't want to brew such a beer--I can buy it, if for some unknown reason I wanted that.
I wanted a flavorful quaffer, and this gets there. Hops are Hallertau plus a bittering hop which escapes me right now.
If i were going to scale that recipe back a bit, I'd probably do this:
7# Pilsner
3.5# Maris Otter
13 oz 20L Crystal/Caramel
13 oz Munich
I'm planning on brewing that this weekend. Here's the interesting thing about this beer: it's FAST from grain to glass. I brewed one in May that I kegged after 10 days, force carbed it the rest of the way, and served it to my local homebrew club 11 days after brewing.
Great, just great positive feedback on it. Then I told them the news: not only was it just 11 days old, I pitched the White Labs WLP029 yeast with no starter. Fermented it at 60 degrees, a short increase for the yeast to clean up after itself at the end, then crashed after a week.
I also do a step-mash: About 134 degrees for 10 minutes, then ramp to 149 degrees for the rest of the time. That makes it a little more fermentable and a bit drier, but that is offset by the more flavorful malts I'm using.
Now, all that is what I do. I'm kind of in
@S-Met's corner in that if you already have a good one, serve it. If you want to add a little more depth to it, swap out some of the base malt for Maris Otter, add a pound or so of Munich, and you'll create greater depth of flavor.