Brew # 17 - Kegging

It's been about three weeks since I started the Kolsch fermentation. Everything appeared to finish about a week ago, so I started the cold crash. Now it's time to transfer to the keg for lagering.

I've sanitised the keg, filled with CO2 to 8PSI, and then placed in the keezer to cool.

The beer has been at ~4C for the last 5 days, and I don't want to transfer to a room temp (20C) keg, so I've brought the keg down to the same temp as the beer.

The keg is pressurised at 8PSI so that I can start with a balanced system, then slowly reduce the pressure in the keg using the spunding valve. This will draw the beer through from the fermenter into the keg.

Whole process took around 30 minutes.

The best bit was what came next...

There's always about 1.5-3 litres left at the bottom of the fermenter. This includes the trub and yeast cake, which you can just about see in the image above.

This is plenty enough to have a little taster. In this case, a little taster wasn't enough!! This beer is delicious.

Full disclosure, I'd had a few beers before I started. Nevertheless, I literally couldn't stop drinking this beer until I was below the yeast line.

I could really taste the 'bready' Kolsch flavour coming through. Tasted fantastic. I also measured the FG - 1.016, which puts this beer in the 6% area (OG was 1.060).

Very excited to see how this develops over the next few weeks.

Coming next...

• (At least) four weeks of lagering
• Drink

Four weeks is a long time, and I've only got the Milk Stout to drink, so I'm going to try and brew a quick pale ale in the meantime. That's next!