Brewer's Cache » Cream Ale

10/17/2007 – Company Cream Ale – taste with age

brewbaron — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:46:10 +0000

My batch of Company Cream ale is aging nicely and is becoming more drinkable. The almost-overpowering ester profile has faded considerably and the corn-like flavor (style characteristic) is starting to come through. Also, the beer has marginally cleared; it is still hazy but not embarrassingly hazy. The hop bitterness is spot-on; I wouldn’t change a thing.

If you attempt this one, be sure to keg it and forget about it; come back to it in six months and I bet that you will be pleased.

10/1/07 – Company Cream Ale – Early Observations

brewbaron — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:05:53 +0000

This batch of company cream ale is finally carbonated enough to issue some early observations. The color of this beer is a very nice straw yellow color but is quite hazy. I recommend that a flocculant be used to create a beautifully clear beer. This beer has a strong flavor profile with very apparant ester notes of bananna and pear. I can also detect some cider notes in this one, which would likely be due to the extra table sugar added. I recommend that a Californa Ale Yeast be used to clean up the profile a bit and be sure to keep control of your fermentation temperatures. There is little or no hop flavor and the nose is all esters. For a cream ale, I would have perfered a more noticable DMS character, which I am sure is present but masked by the strong ester profile.

This beer has a very nice mouthfeel, very drinkable. I need to fine tune the carbonation before I can give a full report.
Overall, this is going to be a fine beer, just not the beer that I had intended ( we will see ). To find the right balance in this recipe, next time around I am going to experiment with first using a cleaner yeast and keeping very close attention to the fermentation temperature, and then if that doesn’t get me where I want to be, I am going to cut almost all of the table sugar out of the recipe.

[Edit] This beer is improving every day with age and improved carbonation.

If you attempt this recipe, let me know. I always love to hear feedback from the readers.

9/21/07 – Now on tap: Company cream ale

brewbaron — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:01:06 +0000

I just tapped my recipe, Company Cream Ale, brewed some weeks ago. Though it is quite early to offer my my early observations, I can say that I nailed the color that I was shooting for. This beer pours crystal clear with a beautiful straw yellow color–it was my first attempt at a light-lovenbond beer. The first pour was relatively free of any “gunk;” I chose to secondary this beer, a practice that has significantly waned now that I keg my beers.

At this point, the flavor is pretty strong; the DMS that is characterisitic of the cream ale style does come through. The pilsen malts and a boil limited to 70 minutes contributed the DMS. The alcohol warmth is certainly present ( 7+%). I expect that this beer will be a nice counterpoint to my lastest batch of brew, the Step Ladder Foreign Stout, which will take its place on tap in a couple of weeks. I hope that the difference in final gravity of the cream ale will be different enough from the stout that I will be able to pour a black and tan, where one beer “sits” on the other in the glass.
More updates to follow when this golden beauty is fully carbonated ( and further aged ).

August 13, 2007: Company Cream Ale

brewbaron — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:30:36 +0000

Company Cream Ale

This a light-bodied cream ale ( ale-equivilent to light American lager ). A full description will be added after tasting. I am shooting for a crisp, clean finish with a light mouthfeel–something that is easy drinking. This beer should turn out like a big version of Rolling Rock. I have never brewed a beer that is this high in gravity or mashed at such a low temperature. I hope that the desired balance comes out. The color is very, very light, around 3-4 SRM.

In this beer, one of the key flavors is DMS. The boil length was reduced to allow for some DMS to remaining the wort. DMS has a half-life of 40 minutes.

Grain Bill

6 lbs Pale 2-row
6 lbs Pilsen ( 2-row) malt
1 lbs Flaked Corn ( maize )
1 lbs 2 oz Table Sugar

OG: 1.066 @ 70% efficiency

Mash: Multi-step

A multistep mash is required because a large portion of the grist is pilsen malt, a moderately modified malt. With a 5-gal capacity igloo-style cooler, multi-rest mashing can be a challenge. If I had more space, I would have conducted the first step with a greater water to grist ratio. After about 40 minutes, I had to draw off one quart of wort from the mash and heat it up to 190 degrees to adjust the mash temperature. I performed a batch sparge and collected seven gallons of wort in total. Be sure to exclude the table sugar from all of your mash calculations.

25 minutes @ 120F R = .8
90 minutes @ 149F ( for conversion ) R = 1.3
Hop Schedule: 75 minute Boil

1 oz Amarillo ( 7.6 AAU ) @ 70 minutes
1 oz Amarillo ( 7.6 AAU ) @ flameout

Yeast and Fermentation

I just used a pack of Munton’s Ale yeast that I rehydrated for 30 minutes before adding to the wort. Visible activity in the airlock was apparent in about three hours ( not bad for dry yeast!) I am going to ferment this as close to 65F as I can, which is some temperature around 70F–It’s in a cold water bath.

Additional Notes:

Due to the capacity of my brewpot, I had withhold about 2 gallons of the wort until after the hot break. The extra wort was added back in at 70 minutes.