Yikes... It has been too long since my last blog post. We've been busy brewing 360 Barrels of Oktoberfest, while trying to keep up production of our year round beers. As a result, I haven't had much time to brew new beers or do blogging about other happenings in the brewery. Today however, we were able to sneak in a new 30 barrel batch of Cream Ale. For several reasons, I am super excited about brewing this beer.
Many people don't realize that just about every American style of beer has roots that harken back to other countries' brewing traditions. In fact, the California Common is the only style that I can think of that is truly an American invention. In the case of American style ales, most of them stemmed from English Ales and evolved to be what they are now. However, it surprises a lot of people to hear that cream ales really evolved from German style lagers (and the hybrid style Kölsch).
In Germany, when Pilseners first became popular, the style took off. At the time, it was revolutionary to have a beer brewed with such a light color and full hoppy flavor. Several styles evolved from the Pils, including the Helles, which was a result of consumers liking the light color and body of Pils, but wanted less bitterness. When brewing lagers in America gained popularity, American brewers found that with North American ingredients, they were unable to brew a beer as light as the Germans. In an attempt to brew lighter colored beers, brewers began using adjuncts like corn and rice and the American Adjunct Lager was born.
The Kölsch is another style that evolved from the Pils and is also moderately hoppy. Similar to Kölsch, cream ales are fermented with ale yeast and go through a short lagering period. The idea is to produce a beer that is as highly drinkable as light lagers, but to have more flavor. The original cream ales were really pretty subpar as a result of using American 6-Row Barley (as opposed to 2-Row), inferior American hops, and bland yeast strains. In an effort to brew the type of beer that the original cream ale brewers would have wanted to brew if they had the resources available, we are using German Premium Pils Malt and Kölsch yeast.
Recently, cream ales have gotten a bit of a bad reputation as not being a crafty enough beer for craft beer drinkers and having too much flavor for light beer drinkers. A large reason for this I think is that a lot of craft brewers don't put the time into the style to lager it correctly, or they use yeast strains that are really intended for clean ales that showcase hops. However, using Kölsch yeast, a significant part of this beer's character will come from fermentation and will have light fruity esters which taste somewhat similar to Riesling wines.
The biggest reason that I am excited about this beer is that when I first decided to start brewing, it was because I wanted to make a beer as good as my (at the time) favorite beer. The first beer that I had ever drank was a cream ale from New Glarus in Wisconsin; Spotted Cow. I got hooked on craft beers when I was spending my summers in Madison, WI. Spotted Cow was always my go-to choice. Coming back to Alabama for college, I went to my first keg party and tried my first lite beer. That day I decided that if I couldn't get craft beer in Alabama, I would just learn to brew it myself. I always wanted to brew a Spotted Cow clone.
Early in my home brewing days, I was reading BeerAdvocate and saw a post from New Glarus Brewmaster Dan Carey. He rarely ever posted and he is pretty secretive about his recipes. I sent him a private message with my attempt at guessing their recipe. He was very kind to tell me to change one of my caramel malts to a darker caramel malt and that other than that, it was good to go. Looking over the recipe now, and knowing that Dan Carey was trained in Germany as well, I realized that the correct way to brew this beer is to use more of a German approach to the beer.
On two occasions I tried brewing that recipe. The first time, the beer was ok, but I didn't have a good fermentation temperature control in my apartment at the time and I thought it could have been better. The second time was actually about 3 years ago at Blue Pants, I brewed a 1 barrel batch and it was way over gravity. Now that I understand the German brewing traditions of Kölsch a lot better, I am
very excited about this batch that we are brewing now. While the recipe has changed a bit so as not to be an exact Spotted Cow clone, I do think that fans of Spotted Cow will see the relation between the beers.
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