Introducing St. Elmo Brewing Co. / Jester King Brewery Koelschip Kölsch!

We love crispy beers. We love coolships. We love collaborating with talented brewers, especially when they're local friends. All of these things come together in Koelschip Kölsch!

We first drank authentic German Kölsch when we traveled to Cologne in 2012 to collaborate with Freigeist Bierkultur and our friend Sebastian Sauer, with whom we made Sauer Power and Sing•along Deathmatch. We were totally hooked from the start. A few years later, our friends at St. Elmo Brewing Co. started making Carl, a tasty, crispy Kölsch with beautiful malt character. It rocketed up our list of favorite local beers. When it came time to collaborate with St. Elmo, we were excited to do a riff on Carl with them.

Since it was coolship season, we decided to brew a Kölsch with a base of TexMalt Llano Pilsner Malt and Saphir hops, then rack the wort to our coolship at Jester King for primary fermentation. We cooled in-line through our heat exchanger going from kettle to coolship. The coolship functioned as a large, shallow open fermenter, rather than a cooling vessel. We pitched Kölsch yeast at knockout into the coolship. After high krausen in the coolship, the remainder of primary fermentation and lagering was done in stainless steel.

Koelschip Kölsch was filtered and packaged this Monday. It's drinking delightfully fresh, crisp, and clean (5.1% abv). It was packaged DRAFT ONLY, so make sure to come out to Jester King to experience it. Thanks to our friends at St. Elmo for the opportunity to work together and do a spin on our one of our favorite styles of beer and favorite local beers!

Photo by Jess Attie.