Cream Ale

Ready to brew a great American lawnmower beer?

From Josh Weikert’s Make Your Best series: The dose of sugar and mash regime should help get this dry, while the Crystal hops and light esters add pleasant character to a clean background. The result is a beer that drinks well by the liter.

Here is a homebrew-scale recipe for Wolf’s Ridge Brewing’s foundational cream ale—Clear Sky—plus directions on how to take it further, to brew a beer inspired by their award-winning coffee vanilla cream ale, Daybreak.

At Wolf’s Ridge in Columbus, Ohio, head brewer Chris Davison leads a flavor-forward beer program with roots in experimental homebrewing and a growing pile of accolades.

In Weymouth, Massachusetts, Vitamin Sea Brewing are tinkering with and launching trendy styles to flavorful new heights—and finding plenty of fans up for the ride.

Ohio’s Wolf’s Ridge Brewing took home GABF medals two years in a row, then its Double Chocolate Rum Barrel Dire Wolf made our Best 20 Beers in 2020. In this episode, head brewer Chris Davison digs into barrel-aging, unusual coffee beer, and much more.

The bright and lively nature of this hybrid style makes it the perfect choice as an American alternative to European lagers. While the name can be more sleight-of-hand than literal, that won’t stop us from recommending five we love.

Inspired by tantalizing descriptions of cream ale from the early 20th century, this recipe combines ideas from both the pre- and post-Prohibition eras—including corn in the grist, dry hopping, and above-average strength.

In this edition of Style School, Jeff Alworth explains how an American heirloom style began as a marketing creation of the Industrial Age—and where today’s more playful breweries have run with it.

While some think of beers as being either lagers or ales, there is a third category: hybrids. Let's examine how the beers in this category differ from each other but also how we can make recipe and/or process changes to make them the best they can be.

Once a year the candy that resembles a vegetable takes over America. What was once confined to trick-or-treat bags is now finding its way into beer.