Thoughts on this California Common (Steam)

[timtoos]

Got a California common beer from MM.

It was a strange kit to be honest. It had Pils malt and munich that’s all, resulting in what would be a very light beer and the hops were Hallertauer Mittlefruh not northern brewer as you usually find. Sounds more of a lager.

Anyway, rightly or wrongly I changed it. I substituted the hops to northern brewer, using 60 minute, 15 minute and 1 minute hop additions and aimed for a BTU of 40.

Now here's the thing. I also added crystal 120L (EBC 200), 500g. This made up 10% of the grist, with the Munich 10% and the pils malt the remaining 80%.

I brewed it yesterday and hit my numbers. Now I am here trying to way up what I have done. Is this added crystal, especially the 120L, and at this amount far too much?

What type of beer will it be? Still a steam beer? Colour is within range at 25 EBC. I'm thinking the beer will be very chewy, not a light beer at all

What are your thoughts on what I have done?

Cheers

 

[MyQul]

At the end of the day it'll end up as beer. 10% crystal is fine. That's what I add to my bitters. If you look at style guidelines for CaliCommon's they're described as American Amber beers. Adding crystal as normal for this style in fact it's more strange that the kit didnt come with any in. You were right to swap out the hops for NB as NB is a signatute in Calicommons. Have a look at this BYO article for CaliCommon and you'll see that you've done everything correct

https://byo.com/article/california-common-style-profile-2/

 

[timtoos]

Thanks for the reply.
That's the article I read and based my changes on. I'm just questioning the high colour crystal that I used. Maybe a crystal lower in colour would've been a better choice.

 

[MyQul]

I think that's possible the only 'mistake' you may have made as the article says to use medium (60L) crystal

 

[timtoos]

It's fermenting happily away at the moment.
I will report back with what it's like when it's all ready.
Cheers

 

[Zephyr259]

Should be a good beer, my "California" Common was 10% CaraRed which is 50 ebc, but had 1% carafa special I for colour. My grain bill was me Munich focused with 49% Munich and 40% pale malt based on a recipe from Dave Carpenter's book on lager. Nice beer, but I used Voss kveik which wasn't as neutral as it's hoped even fermenting cooler and I sucked back the santised in the blow of jar when chilling which may have killed the hops.

Your version should be crisper than mine so closer to the hybrid lager it should be.

 

[timtoos]

I've never had a steam beer so have nothing to base it on. I've wanted to brew one for ages but never seemed to get round to it - until now.
I'm using Mangrove M54 yeast. It recommends fermenting at 18C, with a range of 17 - 20C. I'm fermenting at 17C but after reading what a lot of folks say even this is on the high side.

 

[timtoos]

The thing I don't understand is, I thought the basis of this beer was to ferment using a special lager type yeast but at ale temperatures. If fermenting at lager temperatures, as some seem to, why not just a lager yeast? Is 17C too high given that this yeast range is from 18C - 20C.

 

[timtoos]

Zephyr259, I have made that mistake before, more than once too. Nothing worse than getting to the transfer stage after nursing a fermentation and than at the last hurdle getting sanitiser pulled back into the brew

 

[MickDundee]

I've never had a steam beer so have nothing to base it on.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s both sell Anchor Steam.

 

[MyQul]

The thing I don't understand is, I thought the basis of this beer was to ferment using a special lager type yeast but at ale temperatures. If fermenting at lager temperatures, as some seem to, why not just a lager yeast? Is 17C too high given that this yeast range is from 18C - 20C.

If they're talking about using calicommon yeast they're probably talking about fermenting at about 15C. If you fermented calicommon at actual lager temps (around 12C) it would stall because it would be too cool for it. I haven't fermenter MJ calicommon at 15C but I've fermented CML calicommon at this temp a number of times