California Creamin'

[Pinto]

Inspired by some footage I saw from Mother Earth Brewery in the USA earlier today (the description sounded perfect for a brew for SWMBO to drink - described as "cream soda" ) im going to have a go at this on my small kit soon :

California Creamin' - Cream Ale
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Batch Size: 13.620 L
Boil Size: 15.820 L
Boil Time: 60.000 min
Efficiency: 70%
OG: 1.049
FG: 1.011
ABV: 4.8%
Bitterness: 21.2 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 5 SRM (Morey)

Fermentables
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Name Type Amount Mashed Late Yield Color
Pale Malt (2 Row) UK Grain 2.300 kg Yes No 78% 3 L
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L Grain 50.000 g No No 75% 10 L
Cara-Pils/Dextrine Grain 50.000 g No No 72% 2 L
Corn, Flaked Grain 850.000 g Yes No 80% 1 L
Total grain: 3.250 kg

Hops
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Name Alpha Amount Use Time Form IBU
Perle 7.0% 20.000 g Boil 60.000 min Leaf 21.2
Hallertau 4.5% 25.000 g Aroma 15.000 min Leaf 0.0

Misc
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Name Type Use Amount Time
Vanilla Beans Flavor Secondary 4 beans 5.000 day

I've recently picked up some Mangrove Jack's Lager yeast so will ferment with this at 16 degrees before lagering at 1 degree for a couple of weeks - and as im new to this style, does the above look ok ? any advice ?

[Barley Water]

Have you ever messed with vanilla beans before? Let's put it this way, you can easily, and I mean really easily, overpower a beer with that stuff. I have made a Bourbon Vanilla Porter the last couple of years and I want to say we used 1 1/2 whole beans and really I thought it was too much (and we are talking about a high gravity beer with lots of strong flavors going on). Many years ago I also tried adding vanilla to an alt bier and the stuff tasted like an apple pie which frankly is not my cup of tea. My suggestion is to take the beans and let them sit for a couple of days in some neutral spirit (like vodka for instance). Take the flavored tincture you produce and lightly dose the beer with it until you get the taste you want. You really want just a nuance because too much will quickly tire the old taste buds. Anyhow, that procedure will give you a little insurance so hopefully you won't mess up your beer.

What you might want to do is get some Bud/Miller/Coors and try adding just a little vanilla extract to it and see how you like the flavor (or maybe feed some to you bride and see how she likes it). Of course everyone's taste is different but really that doesn't sound all that great to me.

[Pinto]

Good advice and making bud into a sampler sounds like a plan - mind you, the idea of the brew is that the vanilla is very forwards (its the way the commercial pint is made too) - as I said, the description was "cream soda". Vanilla is a powerful flavour tho - although to date i've only used extract for cost reasons.

Who'd have thought I'd willingly buy bud tho ?

[6470zzy]

any advice ?

The recipe looks good, other than your selection of the 2 Row malt, which I understand due to lack of available 6 row . Are you able to source Honey malt and Cluster hops?
Honey malt being a key ingredient to the recipe and the Cluster hops are a classic hop for the American Cream ale style.

Cheers

[Pinto]

The base malt will most likely be Marris or Optic as I have these in stock, and I can get honey malt, but im following this....

I noticed that they were quite happy, as a brewery, to give away the details on their ingredients, so im going for a direct clone rather than going for a strict style brew.