I bought a six pack of Cow on the way home for a side-by-side comparison. Doing a side by side physical comparison, my beer is a bit darker than the cow and more clear. The cow holds a much better head than mine which has been typical of my beers. In tasting, the cow has a more floral front, like fruit or sweet wine, and with the same being true for the nose. My beer has a more "corn" nose, not as sweet but not tart, more earthy maybe. Mine has more body/mouthfeel and both finish clean and crisp with mine having a slight copper taste at finish. I think I prefer the cow right now due to the more sweet/floral nose than my more vegetable nose. We'll see how the next batch turns out. I used 75/25 2-row to 6-row with this batch that I'm going to skip next time.
I'm not a taster so I'm shooting from the hip WRT the tastes so I'm probably missing a lot of them. I only had 68% efficiency which may let more of the corn flavor come through. I have a larger boil kettle now so I am going to do a full-volume BiaB next time w/o sparge which should get me higher efficiency. I'm also going to boil harder next time, maybe for longer, in case the corny taste is from DMS. My final gravity was 1.006 from 1.045 giving me 5.1% ABV and 86.1% apparent attenuation. I might mash a bit lower (152 instead of 154) next time to reduce the mouth-feel some. Mostly though I need to reduce the corn nose/front and get more floral. Maybe a flame-out Saaz addition or something.
Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 32.50 %
1.70 lb Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM) Grain 18.42 %
1.63 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 17.66 %
1.40 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 15.17 %
0.50 lb Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) Grain 5.42 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 5.42 %
0.50 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 5.42 %
0.50 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (60 min) Hops 14.8 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (15 min) Hops 3.5 IBU
0.50 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs Kolsch Yeast (Wyeast Labs #2565) Yeast-Ale
Does anyone have any input? Overall I just finished two good beers, one mine and the other a Cow, got a good buzz going, and I'm going to put the kids to bed. In about five weeks I'll have the results of the next try (brewing next Wednesday).