Brewing Notes - Cream Ale
I followed a partial mash procedure for this recipe. The American 2 row malt was placed in a gallon size ziploc bag and Mike and I crushed it using a rolling pin. Since there was 4 pounds of the stuff, we had to crush it in shifts. We placed the 2 row in 2 gallon cylindrical beverage cooler along with the caramel malt (I crushed that too) and the flaked maize (yeah, corn). 5.5 quarts of 160 degree water was poured into the cooler to reach the mashing temperature of 149 degrees. The grains sat in the cooler for an hour. After an hour was up, I took the cover off the cooler. Mike has a sweet strainer which I placed over the top of my kettle. I poured all the contents of the cooler into the strainer; the liquid past through to the kettle and grains stayed in the strainer.
Nice.
While the mash was resting, I heated 2 gallons of water in another pot to 170 degrees. I poured this water over the grains in the strainer slowly. Mike told me this step was called ‘rinsing the grains’. I filled the kettle with water to get it to the 5 gallon mark.
The boil lasted for 60 minutes. I added the hops at the beginning of the boil and with 15 minutes to go. We used the wort chiller to cool the wort to 70 degrees and I added the smack pack of yeast.
Primary fermentation lasted for 1 week and the beer was cold conditioned in Mike’s fridge for 2 months.
O.G: 1.040
F.G: 1.009
The beer was light in color, very clean tasting but more flavorful compared to say a Bud Light. It wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be, so next time I will boil it for 90 minutes. Also, I will probably use only Cluster hops in the future.
Check out the Cream Ale Style Profile.
on June 1st, 2008 at 9:18 pm
[…] out the cream ale brewing notes on this partial mash […]
on June 25th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
You mentioned that the partial mash was cold conditioned for 2 months. Is there any reason why it couldn’t go into bottles after fermentation for a couple weeks? I don’t have the equipment, or the patience, to cold condition.
on June 25th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Yep, Mike and I cold conditioned the cream ale for two months in a secondary vessel, which was a keg. It was stored in his extra fridge for a while.
The main reason we did that was A) because we had the equipment B) we had the time and C) I was following a style guideline as stated by the book - The Brewmaster’s Bible.
I think the cold conditioning is supposed to help all the suspended yeast and proteins to settle out and mellow out the flavor. I think conditioning is best when you have the beer en masse and not separated out into bottles. That said, I think you can make a nice light ale without the cold conditioning step. If you can’t justify an extra fridge, I don’t think it should stop you from making beers. To really understand the difference, one would need to experiment and taste a batch of the same recipe that followed a cold condition procedure and then a batch that wasn’t cold conditioned.
So many experiments. So little time. Brew On!