Beer · Style · Short entry
Kölsch
Kölsch is the pale, top-fermented beer of Cologne. The name is protected by the brewers' Kölsch Konvention and as an EU protected geographical indication.
Method
Top-fermented, then cold-conditioned; filtered.
Character
'Light, highly attenuated, hop-accentuated, clear, top-fermenting Vollbier' (Kölsch Konvention, as quoted by the BJCP).
Contested
Sources disagree on the year of the Kölsch Konvention: the BJCP gives 1986, some brewing press 1985.
A protected name
Cologne has brewed with top-fermenting yeast since the Middle Ages, but the beer called Kölsch developed in the late 1800s as a local answer to pale lager. The Cologne brewers' Kölsch Konvention (dated 1986 by the BJCP) defines it as a light, highly attenuated, hop-accentuated, clear, top-fermenting beer and limits the name to breweries in and around the city.
The EU protects "Kölsch" as a geographical indication, registered on the basis of Regulation (EC) No 1107/96 as amended in November 1997, with an amended specification approved in 2009. North Rhine-Westphalia's market-surveillance rules allow the name only for beer brewed in the city of Cologne or at named sites in Bedburg, Bonn, Brühl, Dormagen, Frechen, Leverkusen, Monheim and Wiehl.
How it connects
Recipe
- pairs with Rheinischer Sauerbraten