Thanks everyone! I hear you all loud and clear on the Vienna reduction. The only problem with that (d'oh!) is that I milled all the grains at once at the LHBS and threw them in one large bag. I didn't think much about scrutinizing the grain bill since Weikert's recipes have always produced solid beer when I've followed them, but it sounds like it's not traditional or within the guidelines of a classic Kolsch given the high percentage of Vienna. I was mostly concerned with producing a beer too low of gravity/with too little body on a 10 gallon batch and was hoping I wouldn't have to scale down my batch size to 9 or 8 gallons (or add sugar) to increase my OG.
Having never brewed with Vienna, do you think this will produce something less palatable than a higher Pils version? I'm ok if it doesn't fit guidelines perfectly and simply want a nice summer beer that has some of the characteristics I like in a good Kolsch. I recently brewed a dunkel that had way too thin of a mouthfeel. I scaled that one up to 11 gallons from 10 and found that it still hit all of the BJCP guidelines, but it is toeing the line of being watery which was kind of a letdown. I don't want to replicate that mistake on this beer.
At some point you're going to have to ask yourself whether you're going to be a slave to style, or produce good beer you want to drink. Maybe you can do both, but if you can only have one, what would you choose?
My "Kolsch," which according to my German acquaintance, isn't really a Kolsch, doesn't mean it's not a good beer. It's an excellent beer, but it has more flavor despite its drinkability than the style would suggest.
I've bought a few commercial Kolsch's lately to see how mine stacks up. Verdict? I'd never buy any of the commercial ones again. Mine, however, may not ever win a brewing contest because it's not, exactly, what a Kolsch is supposed to be.
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There's a local "guru" of homebrewing I've asked to assess my beers. The first thing he wants to know is what the style is, and then, as if I'm in a contest, he starts evaluating it in terms of style guidelines.
I was stunned by this; all I wanted to know is whether the beer was good, and he was picking at it in terms of some guideline. Yeah, it was a little less carbonated than the style,
but I don't like it carbed quite that much. And maybe it has a little more of this flavor profile than one might expect,
but I brewed it that way on purpose.
For this guy, if he can't stick it in a style, apparently he can't assess it. Well, OK. But I'm trying to brew beer I want to drink (and others, too), and hitting a style is not as important to me as people coming back and wanting a second one.
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I think it's normal and natural for new brewers to focus on what you might think of as measurables. Things like gravity, brewhouse and mash efficiency, ABV, and, of course, adherance to style. I don't think that's bad, as ultimately it's a focus on process, and if you get the process down, the rest of this brewing thing is comparatively easy.
And I get how competitions have to have some sort of benchmark against which to compare entries.
But in the end, to me at last, being a slave to style is unfortunate. I play with my recipes, and I'm not sure there's a commercial beer out there that matches them.
So--brew up your beer. It's not going to be bad, it's just not going to be what you think it was going to be. And who knows? You might really like it, enough that it goes into your rotation. If that happens, come back here and tell us, and include the exact recipe. And if it doesn't, learn from it, consider how to move it toward what you wanted it to be, and try again.
Good luck and let us know.
