Typical hop amounts for Pilsner or Kolsch

LeeF · 04-08-2009, 07:15 PM

I'm trying to decide between an extract Pils or Kolsch for a light summer brew. I have brewed a Bohemian Pils many years ago and it had 2 oz Perle bittering hops and 2 oz Saaz aroma. I'm planning on adding hops to the recipe I choose. My question is at what point is it too much hops for the style?

The kits are for 5 gals and from Midwest:

Kolsch

6 lbs. Pilsen liquid malt extract
12 oz. Munich 10°L
4 oz. Crystal 10°L
1 oz. 'specialty grains'

1 oz. Perle 60 mins
1 oz. Spalt 2 mins

Pilsner

6 lbs. Pilsen liquid extract
8 oz. Carapils
8 oz. Crystal 10°L

1 oz. Saaz 60 mins
1 oz. Saaz 5 mins

**brewmasterpa** · 04-08-2009, 07:52 PM

i would say youre pushing it with what you have in the recipe already. ive found that when i bittered a pale ale with 1 oz of saaz, it took a month of conditioning before it was even drinkable. and the perle is very similar in flavor and alpha acids. personally, i would either change the hop designation for youre recipes, or back them off a bit. you want your pilsner to be no more than about 20 ibu and your kolsche you can go probably about 25 ibu due to the munich malt in youre recipe. that adds a nice balance. i would run your recipe through recipator or beer smith and see what you come up with. you can also play with different hop varieties as well. personally on the pilsner, i would bitter with hallertauer and flavor with tetnang. just my preference. itll fit the style nicely.

**GilaMinumBeer** · 04-08-2009, 08:04 PM

BJCP Style Guidelines

chumprock · 04-08-2009, 09:24 PM

Kolsch suggested is 20-30 IBU, and your numbers in Beersmith work out to about 25 ( 23.5 + 1.1 = 24.6) for the Pearle and Spalt. Sounds fine to me?

Pils style reads:
Crisp, clean, refreshing beer that prominently features noble German hop bitterness accentuated by sulfates in the water.

And Beersmith suggests 25-45 IBU! With the Saaz you're using that's only getting to 14.1. All the Pilsner recipes I look at use wayyy more hops than that.

**CharlosCarlies** · 04-09-2009, 02:30 AM

The kolsch seems fine but I might add another 1 oz at 15 min for the pilsner. It'll bump our IBUs just a little and add some nice flavor/aromas.

**brewmasterpa** · 04-09-2009, 05:57 AM

i made a german pilsner that had hallertaur as a bitterning hop and tetnang as a flavor hop. ibu was 25 and it was perfect. wouldnt change a thing. as a matte of fact, if you look at my recipes, pilsner heavern is the recipe. now, im not big on saaz for bittering. as i said earlier, i had an off experience with using saaz for bittering, perhaps it was an anomole with my brew, but everything went as planned. it just didnt turn out right for me anyway. you can brew however you like, there are some people that prefer quite a bit more bitter beer than my palate prefers.

LeeF · 04-09-2009, 03:58 PM

Thanks for the input. I've decided on the Kolsch. Just curious, what do you use to calculate the IBU's? I'm using an online IBU calculator and I get much higher numbers than you get.