Limitations: Beer 6 (California Common)

This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.

Author: T. Bowen

For my second beer in the Limitations Series, I decided to do something a little different—at least, different for me. I’ve never brewed a lager because they don’t really appeal to me. But, since one of our available yeast strains was a lager strain, I figured now was as good a time as ever.

Looking at the BJCP style guidelines, California Common (19B) was going to be my best option. I knew it certainly wouldn’t be “to style,” but I’ve never cared much about stylistic parameters anyway. For starters, I wouldn’t be able to get the color that Cali Commons exhibit. I briefly considered toasting some of my malt to get some darker colors, but that wouldn’t work because I didn’t have time to let the grains rest in a bag post-roast (required to let the harsh and bitter characteristics of the roasted grain volatilize). Moreover, the guidelines call for “…traditional American hops (often with woody, rustic or minty qualities)…” Maybe Nugget could fall under these parameters, but I certainly would not put Amarillo in that camp.

Recipe

First, I decided to only do a 2-gallon batch, primarily because I just was not sure how this beer would turn out. That, coupled with the fact that I don’t really like lagers anyway, made me concerned that I wouldn’t want n full 5-gallon batch of this in the keezer.

Even though I needed as much color as I could get from the available malts for this style, I didn’t want this to turn into a malt bomb, so I tried to strike the balance with getting my color but still keeping the Munich in check (the darkest available malt). Finally, you’ll notice that I’m doing a 30-minute mash and 30-minute boil here. I’ve started doing 30-minute boils because I rarely use any hops as boil additions, and it’s another way of shortening the brew day. And with no crazy amount of oats or other adjuncts, I felt comfortable shortening the day even more with a 30-minute mash. Here’s what I landed on:

• Mashed at 152ºF for 30 minutes
  • 60% Light Munich
  • 30% Maris Otter
  • 10% White Wheat
• Boiled for 30 minutes
  • 0.25 oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 13.3% AA (28.2 IBUs)
  • 0.25 oz. Amarillo (5 min.) at 7.9% AA (4.35 IBUs)
  • 1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.)
• Dry hop: 2 oz. Amarillo
• Pitched WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast
  • Fermented at 65ºF
• Water: Amber Balanced (Bru’n Water)
• OG: 1.050
• FG: 1.012
• ABV: 5%

Brew Day

In another effort to shorten my brew day, I did a full volume, no sparge mash. Although I planned to mash at 152ºF, I came in a little high at 155ºF and rolled with it instead of attempting to correct it.

The boil was rather uneventful save for some crazy foaming during the boil that would not seem to calm down. I think this was due to some extra grain/husks in the boil kettle as I must have done a crappy job lautering.

One thing I did not consider was temperature drop during my whirlpool. I typically lose no more than a few degrees during my whirlpool. However, I did not consider the fact that this was a much smaller volume of wort, and I would therefore lose a lot of heat quickly. If my notes are correct, I lost almost 40ºF during the whirlpool. The bonus here was the final chilling didn’t take long at all.

I racked to the fermenter and pitched WLP810 at 65ºF. Fermentation kicked off relatively quickly and I slowly ramped temps up the last week or so. On Day 15, I racked the beer to the dry hop keg for a few days before putting it in the keezer and force carbing.

Tasting

Appearance: Pours a light copper golden/straw color, with a thick fluffy head. It has some substantial haze to it, but that could be because this was one of the first pours off the keg, and it definitely had some crashed out dry hop debris.

Aroma: My first thought was, “I can’t smell a thing!” And I felt it was severely lacking in aroma, despite the ~1oz./gal. dry hop. I let my better half try to see if she could pick up anything. She picked up a very faint, almost leathery note in the aroma. But, as another participant in this series told me, lagers don’t usually have much in the way of aroma. Thankfully, I picked up no sulfur or any other off-aromas.

Flavor: The beer is full bodied, which I like. One of my main issues with lagers is a lot of them seem thin to me. There’s a nice, subtle orangey bitterness that I’m picking up from the Amarillo. The residual sweetness is very well-balanced with the light, but substantial enough malt backbone.

Overall, this beer turned out a little better than I was expecting. Not so good that I regret only brewing a 2-gallon batch, but I’m also not dumping it immediately. If I were to brew this beer again, I would like to try toasting some of the malt to try and tease out a little roast and toast that could really round things out. Overall, it’s solid as is, but I’ll have to see what some more knowledgeable lager drinkers have to say about it.

Recipe Comparison

Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.