American Cream Ale: light-bodied beer with plenty of hop character produced by the Hallertau hop. Difficulty: the kit came with Vanguard hops because of the hop shortage this year.

The Deutschlander will be sitting in primary/secondary for a about six more weeks, and I was looking for a little more immediate feedback on my brewing process. I’ve elected to start a second batch that should finish up within a couple of weeks. This was the perfect justification to run out and buy an extra carboys for primary as well. I needed to get one for secondary, anyway.

This is a basic kit. It’s an all-extract recipe with a can of plain light malt extract, 2lb bag of light dry extract, 1.5 oz Vanguard bittering hops, and 1/2 of vanguard finishing hops and a packet of Windsor dry yeast. This is a cream ale recipe, which is sort of a hybrid brew. It uses lager yeast at ale fermentation temperature. Thus, it’s one of the few ale styles you can put into secondary.

The plan is to give this one two weeks in primary, and then rack straight into bottles for conditioning. The instructions suggest a secondary period, but some of the research I’ve been doing suggests that there are some benefits to leaving the brew on the yeast cake after primary has finished up,. This would allow the yeast more time to clean up the by-products from the activation phase. In fact, it’s been suggested that the extra time in primary actually performs the same proccesse as secondary, without the added risk of infection, if the secondary was going to be short.

It’s snowing out as I’m boiling the batch, and it’s challenging keeping the heat up. I’m going to give it a longer boil– maybe by as much as a half hour or as long as the propane holds out. I’m also rehydrating the yeast now, though I started with slight cooler water that I’d intended to. One of these days I’ll treat the wee yeasties right.

It also seems like I didn’t add enough water to the brew kettle, and have ended up shy of 5 gallons in the primary. Now I’ve added too much water by about 1.5 quarts, and my starting gravity is a little low. Looks like I’ll be brewing light beer this time around.

Starting gravity is 1.036.

Update 1/12/09: The airlock was bubbling along like crazy earlier yesterday, but seems to have quit sometime in the afternoon. What krausen there was has since laid down. Will give it another few days before I check gravity and possibly re-pitch.

Update 1/18/09: Took a gravity reading of 1.016. Still a little high for this late in the fermentation. I gave it a swirl, and will try raising the temperature a bit to rouse the yeast. I’m not working with a thermometer on this one, so the yeast may have gone dormant on me. I was going to leave it in primary for another week anyway, so the additional time may knock off a few more points. The sample tastes fine, with a stronger hop flavor than I’d anticipated. Still, I’m looking forward to drinking this one!

Update 1/24/2009: Bottling day! Final gravity was 1.015. I managed to fill exactly 32 12oz bottles, and 18 500mL bottles. I had wanted to give the beer some time to settle in the priming bucket, but there was a slow leak at the spigot, and I had to hurry through the bottling. It was still a little cloudy in the bottles, but should hopfully settle out through the week.

The Analysis 1/31/2009: I finally get to try my own, first homebrew. I’m impressed with how well it came out, this being my “first” attempt, though it’s certainly not winning any awards. It’s lightly carbonated after one week in the bottle, but has enough fizz to give it a nice head in the glass, if only briefly. No lacing to speak of. It comes through with a golden-amber color, and has much more clarity than I was expecting. It has a light aroma, with medium body and good mouthfeel. There are notes of corn that probably from the DME, as this particular batch fermented cool and didn’t get all the way to its intended final gravity. The malt flavor is nicely balanced with the hop character, with hints of corn and some mild fruity esters. The finish has a distinct hop character that reminds me a little of Sam Adams’ Boston Ale.