California Common

I spent the night of August 22 cooking beer. It took longer than usual because it’s been several months since I made beer and all of my equipment had to be thoroughly cleaned; and that, after I found each piece! Notice my official DUFF Club brewing hat as I add water to the kettle, it adds that... 'something special?' to my home brews!

On Friday night, I made a peculiar kind of beer called California Common. It’s one of the few beers that is uniquely an American contribution to the beer world. California Common was called Steam Beer in its early days but today’s style, epitomized by Anchor Steam Beer, is superior to its cheap progenitor.

California Common style beer is made by using lager yeast but at the higher temperature typically used to produce ales. This allowed San Franciscans to enjoy a lager beer of sorts before refrigeration came to the west coast of America, and it allows home brewers today to do the same, make a lager beer at ale temperatures. A cool basement is all one needs for the perfect environment to brew California Common style beer.

I have the lager hole! The lager hole's first purpose was for a sump-pump in my basement, but the sump pump hole has only had water in it twice since we built the house seven years ago, and we never bought a sump pump. In the winter, the temperature in the lager hole is 53 degrees, perfect for making a real lager beer but now at the end of August, its up to 64 degrees, a great temperature for making California Common beer.

So there's my carboy, down in the dark cool hole in the basement floor. The wort is alive. It's a world of water, sugars, hops, carbon dioxide, and a growing population of alcohol. There is a frothy head of foam over a floor of yeast in

that reddish-brown
world-of-wort. Chunks of 'stuff' driven by bubbles of CO2 are propelled toward the surface only to be caught by gravity and pulled back to the bottom of the carboy. Yeast rules in the little world of wort.

I used Wyeast 2112 California Lager yeast, a smack pack. I pulled it from the fridge and activated it on Thursday night, a day before I brewed the beer. By early Saturday morning when I finished cooking, the packet was full and tight with pressure. I pitched most of the yeast in the freshly cooked and cooled wort, but I snitched a little tablespoon or so, and put it in an old White Lab bottle.

By Sunday morning, I finished making a crude stir plate. My stir plate is made from an old transformer, a D.C. voltage converter, an old D.C. portable heater fan, and a cow magnet.

I also incorporated 3 of my wife's coffee cups and a little cutting board. It's not a very fancy set-up, but it is stirring the yeast and it hasn't burned the house down... yet! It's held together with electrical tape, spring clamps, hot glue, and the force of gravity! I tried to buy a real stir plate off from ebay last night but lost that action. I'll keep trying as I think my wife wants her coffee cups back.

For now, it looks like I have a pretty good start on my first batch of California Common Home brew for the competition next April and a few billion more cells of California Lager yeast for when I try my next all-grain entry. Cheers!

The hobby of home brewing is more than just a quest to make great beer and wine, it's a chance to experiment, invent, enjoy friends, and most of all to have fun. Never forget to have joy in your life and especially have joy in your hobbies.

"Bless the Lord, Oh my soul... He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." Psalm 104: 1-15