California Common

Tasting Notes

This style of beer has its origin in the California Gold Rush. It is considered neither an ale nor a lager but rather a distinct style in itself. It is brewed with lager yeast but at ale fermentation temperatures. California common has the roundness and cleanness of a lager, but some of the complexity of ale. It has a clean malt character, a light fruitiness, and a noticeable to intense hop bouquet, with a residual sweetness of crystal malt. This style of beer is straw-like in color. California common beer is often referred to as "steam beer," but only in reference to beer made by Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, since it is that company's registered trademark.

Ingredients

California common is produced from two-row pale ale and crystal malts. It is hopped with Cascade and is heavily dry-hopped with Northern Brewer. Either ale or lager yeast is used, though brewers generally prefer lager yeast.

Brewing Techniques

Anchor Steam employs step-infusion mashing with an initial temperature around 60ºC. The beer is fermented with lager yeast between 16 and 21ºC in wide, shallow, stainless steel fermenting vessels. Once fermentation is complete, the beer is kraeusened with 10 to 15% wort and lagered at cold temperatures for 3 weeks at 10ºC. The beer is then filtered and flash pasteurized, both for bottling and kegging.

The information on this page was provided by beer-brewing.com (http://www.beer-brewing.com).