SEYMOUR KENTUCKY COMMON BEER (a rare historic style)

[seymour]

Kentucky Common Beer

We ugly Americans love to take credit for everything--including all forms of great-tasting beer--but in all honesty we didn't invent much. We owe most of our favourite ales and lagers to our immigrant forefathers from England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Holland, etc. American craft beer is some of the greatest in the world nowadays, but we're standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say.

However, Kentucky Common Beer is one little-known beer style we really did invent. I guess that's not much of a claim to fame, since it nearly disappeared for several generations. It was also referred to as Cream Beer, Dark Cream Beer, Cream Common or just Common Beer . You've probably heard of American Cream Ale or even California Common, popularized by Anchor Steam. Kentucky Common Beer was a similar, albeit darker and murkier version of adjunct-heavy top-fermented table beer consumed across the middle and southern United States of America. It was often sour-mashed, just like the preliminary step for distilling Kentucky bourbon. It was the most popular beer in these regions for nearly a century.

A newspaper advertisement from 1904:


A historic source text for Kentucky Common Beer:
Wall & Henius American Handy-book of Brewing, a 1902 brewing book, published by the University of Michigan.
OG: 1040-1044
Grainbill: Pale Malt, 25-30% corn + some Brown Sugar, Caramel Malt, or Roasted Malt to darken the colour
Hops: 1/2 pound per barrel, variety not specified but almost certainly Cluster
IBU: low, ≈15?
Colour: "muddy" appearance
Yeast: top-fermenting ale strain

Although Kentucky Common Beers are still extremely rare, I've seen a few commercial brews in recent years from:
New Albanian Brewery in Indiana, Shorts Brewing Co in Michigan, Sierra Nevada in California, Summit Brewing in Minnesota, Upstate Brewing in New York, Verboten in Colorado, and Wellington County in Ontario.

I tasted a delicious homebrewed Kentucky Common at a St Louis Brews club meeting last year, and I've invited the brewer to comment here as well.

See also Wikipedia and new BJCP style guidelines and InsiderLouisville article.


Following is my personal interpretation. For the record, I am in no way claiming this is an authoritative recipe, but it came out tasting like the historic descriptions, to me at least.

SEYMOUR KENTUCKY COMMON BEER



6 US gallons = 5 Imperial gallons = 22.7 Liters

GRAINBILL:
79.5% = 7.63 lbs = 3462 g, Pale Malt
10% = .96 lb = 435 g, Flaked Corn
6% = .58 lb = 261 g, Crystal 40L Malt
1.5% = .14 lb = 65 g, Aciduated/Enzymatic Malt
1.5% = .14 lb = 65 g, Black Patent Malt
1.5% = .14 lb = 65 g, Chocolate Malt

HOPS:
1.4 oz = 40 g, Cluster, at beginning of 60 min boil
.7 oz = 20 g, Cascade, at flame-out then steep until chilled

YEAST:
regular top-fermenting ale yeast in primary fermentor (I used S-33, the old English EDME strain), then optionally Brett Brux in the secondary ( I bulk-aged for 6 months, though historic examples were mostly drunk fresh)

STATS (assuming around 77% mash efficiency and 81% yeast apparent attenuation):
OG: 1046
FG: 1009
ABV: 4.8%
IBU: 35

[DaveyT]

Is it tasty? And, perhaps more importantly, do you want another after finishing a pint?

[seymour]

Is it tasty? And, perhaps more importantly, do you want another after finishing a pint?

Yes and yes. I'm a real sucker for these dark sour styles. It's not really sour, like many so-called sour styles, it's more of a tart, toasty porter kinda thing, with some extra earthy and funky background notes. Similar in some ways to an aged English Old Ale, except younger and hazier.

[Fido97]

Thanks for your post Seymour its really interesting to learn about this old beer style. Many of us on this forum are always looking for something a bit different (certainly I do). Think I might add this to my 'to brew' list'. One question though - I would associate the word 'common' with California Common...thus using a lager yeast and fermenting warm - is that relevant in any way to this style? If not it might be an interesting variation....or not? Cheers

[Barley Water]

That's very interesting. With the new BJCP guidelines soon to become the law of the land (I assume) I have gone through the proposed guidelines looking for mostly light styles that are new and interesting that I could try. Just a couple of questions:

-do you suppose that the acidulated malt is in the recipe for pH reduction purposes only (I tend to use that 5.2 buffer stuff for that) or does it affect the taste of the beer?

-are you adding brett because in the old days the brewers had less than great sanitation and frequently ended up with infected beer? My experience with brett is that it takes almost a year to get results and it drys the hell out of the beer ('cause those little buggers will eat everything given enough time). My guess would be that if you added brett then drank the stuff young you would be essentially wasting your time.

I would expect the beer to taste like an over-hopped mild given the grist you have there (not a bad thing at all by the way). I could see swapping out the flaked corn for ground corn and ceral mashing the stuff in a slow cooker (to make the brew day shorter). I'd probably also take the last hop charge and throw it in my new Hop Rocket which would speed things up a little, get better hop aroma and filter the wort on the way to the fermentor. Perhaps I'll whip some of this stuff up to serve at the Bluebonnet this year (really big regional contest in the Dallas area). That contest gets really boozy so I always like to take some low octane brew just so I have something to drink that won't make me really stupid in a hour plus of course I can use the rest of the attendees as test subjects for my experiments.

[seymour]

Thanks for your post Seymour its really interesting to learn about this old beer style. Many of us on this forum are always looking for something a bit different (certainly I do)...

Me too, definitely. I continue to learn so much from everyone on this forum.

...One question though - I would associate the word 'common' with California Common...thus using a lager yeast and fermenting warm - is that relevant in any way to this style?

The word "common" in both contexts designated a commonplace, table-strength, everyday session beer. No, I really don't think Kentucky Common ever had anything to do with lager yeast. From what I can tell, unlike their Californian counterpoints, Kentucky brewers weren't delusional enough to think they could brew lagers at ambient temperatures. It seems they used regular ol' ale yeast, bakers' yeast, and/or distillers' yeast.

...If not it might be an interesting variation....or not? Cheers

Sure, why not? Though I never need to rely on a warm lager fermentation to achieve fruity esters; it seems to me there are so many ale yeasts better suited to that purpose.

...Just a couple of questions:

-do you suppose that the acidulated malt is in the recipe for pH reduction purposes only (I tend to use that 5.2 buffer stuff for that) or does it affect the taste of the beer?

That's exactly right. I've done sour mashes before, and that would've been more authentic, but I didn't this time. Instead, aciduated malt in a standard-duration single temperature infusion mash was my method of amplifying some lactobacillus (yogurty) tartness. Combined with the brett, it worked for me. I have no idea if the 5.2 buffer stuff would accomplish the same effect or not.

-are you adding brett because in the old days the brewers had less than great sanitation and frequently ended up with infected beer? My experience with brett is that it takes almost a year to get results and it drys the hell out of the beer ('cause those little buggers will eat everything given enough time). My guess would be that if you added brett then drank the stuff young you would be essentially wasting your time.

Well, yes, though I cringe at the negative connotation "infected" since I don't see brett as a bad thing in certain contexts. But yes, you could say I intentionally "infected" my beer with Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Brettanomyces bruxellensis, and probably some lactobacillus acidification in the mash too. I have no evidence that historic Kentucky Common contained brett, but as I said, my resulting beer matched the appearance, aroma, and flavour descriptions. I don't think brett in a young beer is a waste of time, though I definitely agree that its youthful personality is mild and grows much wilder with age. My Alpha Seymour Brett Cream Ale was a 100% brett fermentation (no regular ale yeast at all). It definitely had an unusual earthiness and funk even after a few weeks, but by 6 months is was lots funkier. If you bottled my Kentucky Common recipe, it would definitely continue to evolve over time. My batch was gone way too fast to know. Anyway, I digress.

...I would expect the beer to taste like an over-hopped mild given the grist you have there (not a bad thing at all by the way)...

That's a pretty good description. An over-hopped mild, but with some underlying English Old Ale tartness and funk, and a little candy corn sweetness. And cloudier. But yeah, a really oddball mild ale, which explains why I love it so much!

...I could see swapping out the flaked corn for ground corn and ceral mashing the stuff in a slow cooker (to make the brew day shorter).

That would certainly work, and maybe corn tastes a little better that way, but I don't know how it would make anything shorter, since I simply included the flaked corn in my regular all-in single-step mash.

...I'd probably also take the last hop charge and throw it in my new Hop Rocket which would speed things up a little, get better hop aroma and filter the wort on the way to the fermentor. Perhaps I'll whip some of this stuff up to serve at the Bluebonnet this year (really big regional contest in the Dallas area). That contest gets really boozy so I always like to take some low octane brew just so I have something to drink that won't make me really stupid in a hour plus of course I can use the rest of the attendees as test subjects for my experiments.

All very good ideas, I hope you do. Can't wait to hear how it goes for you.

[Barley Water]

I got interested in the style after reading the above post and did a bit of research. While I agree that brett is not necessarily bad, in this case I strongly suspect it was not the intent of the brewer to add some funk to the beer (at least according to the stuff I read and yeah, if it was on the internet you know it was true). Of course if it was stored for any lenght of time it was highly likely to pick up some sour notes due to bugs in the wooden barrels employed at the time so "funking" the beer is not inappropriate but also not necessarily manditory. Additionally, and again according to the article, the reason for the dark grains was to effect the pH of the mash as the area where it was traditionally produced apparently has alkaline water. Much like Mild, it was a "working man's beer" and was a so called "current use ale" in part to keep the cost down for the target market. The article also insinuated that the beer was related to Cream Ale and by that I don't mean the wimpy stuff which is now available commercially (which is akin to an ale version of Coors/Miller/Bud). Anyway I see some opportunity here for some big fun as I guess there is not a whole lot documented about how this stuff was made back in the day and for that reason there are alot of "myths" concerning what this beer was really like (which means us homebrew types can take plenty of artistic license). As an aside, I personally believe that Cream Ale before prohibition actually was flavorful much like a preprohibition CAP or Steam beer (in other words it was hoppy) and I plan to play with this a bit also this year.