An Ode to Karl
California Common is one of my favorite beer styles. Partly it’s the affinity for my home state and it being a uniquely California creation. It’s also a downright simple beer that is sessionable in all seasons. Two-row and some medium crystal, northern brewer hops, and a San Francisco lager strain. Since this is a hybrid beer, the only tricky bit can be temperature control. That weird in between for us homebrewers. Too warm for lager and too cool for ale. Luckily I have a mini wine fridge that does the trick, well at least most of the time. Read further and I’ll explain.
I’ve brewed this beer four times now making minor tweaks on original gravity, hop schedule, and fermentation temps. Last Sunday, after waiting for the rain to go and the skies to clear, I got after it again. I’m normally a morning brewer. I like heating my strike water when the sun’s coming up and being cleaned up by lunch time. I’m not necessarily a morning person but I am significantly more productive early in the day and less inclined to be drinking beer at 8am. I also like to make a bunch of racket to wake up the neighbors and I like finishing my brew day in time to have the afternoon to spend with the family. So I was pretty out of my element with this brew day starting around 1pm.
A friend and his brother stopped by to watch me get things going which led to us opening beers before the treated strike water was to temp. Oops. I mentioned it had been raining and once the skies cleared the temp actually dropped a bit and the wind picked up. It was a pretty crappy day to be brewing outdoors so in between brew chores I huddled in the shed with my tools and my beer.
I overshot my strike water and seeing that I was already half a day behind I settled for a modified two-step mash with 30 minutes each at 152 and 158. I want the finished beer to have some body and residual malt sweetness which is why the mash temps are higher than I would be at for other styles or a more traditional step mash at like 133/146/159 or a single infusion around 152.
Lautering went well and the runoff was very clear. I collected 7.5 gallons and began my boil. The wind made managing the boil difficult and I learned that the windscreen on the banjo burner isn’t great. I’d go from wort boiling over the kettle to a kettle that looked a few degrees from rolling boil.
Hop additions went according to schedule until I got to six minutes remaining and my SECOND partial propane tank kicked the bucket. At this point I figured a 55 minute boil was sufficient and I added my last hop addition. The temp was over 200 degrees so well above pasteurization temp and still allowing good isomerization of the last hop addition. After a whirlpool/hop stand around 170 for 15 minutes, I chilled to 65 degrees and pitched my two-pack, two-step starter of WLP810. I sampled the wort as I transferred to the fermenter and it had a really nice deep bitterness without being biting. That should soften nicely with a bit of time and age once this beer finishes. Where my previous three iterations were around 34 IBUs this one is about 43.
It’s been very cold (relatively speaking) in Santa Barbara of late with lows in the mid-30s overnight. This has proven difficult on my fridges in the shed. The morning after brew day there was a slight krausen forming and the temperature was in the low to mid 50s. I set the fridge to 55 and the next morning the beer was at 53. I bumped it to 60 hoping that the yeast would get a start and the exothermic heat would produce a little feedback loop to bump the temp higher but no luck. The temp was 52. Day three I bumped it all the way to 66 degrees but still no luck. I’ve since moved it directly onto the shed floor with daytime high around 60. The beer is happy and fermenting away but the profile will surely be different compared to the other versions fermented primarily around 58-60 degrees. It’s almost amazing that in such a mild climate I’m having trouble keeping beer warm enough. But hey, that’s February, and that’s homebrewing.
This beer will be submitted to NHC this month and I’m affectionately referring to it as Ode to Karl. Some of you may get the joke but for those that do not, the home of California Common (aka Steam Beer) is San Francisco. And SF is famous for its fog, particularly in the late spring and summer as the land heats up and the cold air over the ocean rushes onshore. Several years ago someone named the fog “Karl” to make it less mysterious and more like a neighbor or family member. Karl even has his own twitter account and it’s hilarious. I urge you to run through his feed. So my tribute to the City the style was born in, and to Karl, is a beer in his name.
On a final note, for the next iteration of this beer I want to brew an approximated historical version. BYO among others have aggregated opinions on the ingredients and methods that would have been employed in SF in the 19th century. Specifically, six-row barley, California grown Cluster hops, a high mash temp (158), perhaps a Kolsch/Alt yeast, and fermentation around 64 degrees. Sounds good to me!
Happy brewing.
https://byo.com/article/california-common-style-profile-2/
My recipe below:
California Common v4 AKA “Ode to Karl”
Recipe for 5 gallon, all-grain w/78% efficiency
OG 1057 FG 1016 ABV 5.4% IBU 43 SRM 11
10 lb/89% Domestic Two Row
1 lb/9% Crystal 60
4 oz/2% Acid Malt (amount determined by your own water pH)
0.75 oz Northern Brewer 9.9 AA @ 60 min (27.5 IBU)
0. 50 oz Northern Brewer 9.9 AA @ 10 min (6.6 IBU)
0. 65 oz Northern Brewer 9.9 AA @ 0 min/whirlpool (9 IBU)
WLP 810 – San Francisco Lager
Target Water Profile: Balanced / Amber Balanced or similar (roughly 1:1 sulfate to chloride around 120 ppm each for my 50/50 blend of Santa Barbara treated tap and distilled water)
Mash at 152 F for 30 min
Increase temp by infusion and mash at 158 F for 30 min
Sparge to collect 7.5 gallons
Boil for 60 min
Whirlfloc/Irish Moss at 5-10 min before flameout
Chill to 65 F and pitch
Ferment at 58 for three days. Increase temp to low 60s and ferment until beer hits terminal gravity.
Rack to keg or bottle at 3 volumes CO2
My first iteration of California Common on a sunny Spring day in the year of our beer lord 2017. Always in house approved Bruery glassware