Name: Cool Water Kolsch
Brand: Allegheny City Brewing
Availability: InStock

Allegheny City Brewing is about to have two Kolsches on at once, which is what prompted the question in its newsletter subject line. The brewery's original Kolsch recipe, Cool Water, returns Wednesday. Little Miss Sunshine, the Kolsch that has been holding the slot, is not going anywhere.

They are not two takes on one recipe. According to the brewery, the pair differ in grain, water profile, hops, yeast and lagering time. That is effectively every lever a brewer has. The invitation in the newsletter is to try both and decide which one you prefer.

Kolsch is a good style to run that experiment in, because there is so little in it to hide behind. It is a hybrid by design, fermented warm with ale yeast and then cold conditioned like a lager, and it lands somewhere pale, soft and dry. A beer built like that leaves water chemistry audible in a way a heavier one does not. Changing the water profile between two otherwise similar pale ales is a real fork in the road, not a footnote.

The name on the can carries a small piece of history with it. Cool Water is labeled a Kolsch-Style Ale rather than a Kolsch, because the word itself is protected. A 1986 agreement among Cologne's brewers, backed since by European geographical-indication rules, reserves the name for beer brewed in and around that city. Brewers everywhere else append "style" and get on with it.

Cool Water Kolsch is 5.1 percent ABV. It arrives Wednesday, September 2 on draft and in cans at the Deutschtown taproom on East Ohio Street. The Brighton Heights location on California Avenue gets cans the same day, with draft following once Little Miss Sunshine has finished its run. Brighton Heights is also pouring half-price Little Miss Sunshine drafts on Thursday, so the comparison stays available for at least a little while.

Editor’s Take

The newsletter asks what the plural of Kolsch is, and the honest answer is that Kolsch does not much go in for plurals, on the grounds that it is not only a beer. It is also the dialect they speak in Cologne. So Allegheny City has managed to raise a question in German linguistics on its way to telling Pittsburgh that there are two pale ales on tap this week, and I have enormous affection for that.

The better fact is sitting underneath the joke. Two beers, one style, and the brewery has changed the grain, the water, the hops, the yeast and the lagering time. That is not a variant. That is a separate argument about what a Kolsch ought to be, run twice, with both answers poured side by side on the same bar. Most breweries would never hand you the controlled experiment. This one has put both glasses on the wood and invited you to pick.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Cool Water Kolsch Differs From Its Sibling Down to the Water

Allegheny City's original Kolsch recipe returns Wednesday and lands beside the Kolsch already on tap. The two share a style and very little else. Grain, water, hops, yeast and lagering time all differ.

Source & Editorial