They say you always remember your first, be it car, beer, or blue ribbon. For me, it was a 1984 Pontiac Firebird, midnight blue; a can of Olympia, poached from my parents’ fridge; and a top prize in 2001 for the first beer I ever entered in a homebrew competition.
The winning beer was a hoppy amber ale—a California original and a style that was once the backbone of American craft brewing. The Atomic Amber became my house beer and one that I would go on to brew again and again. It became my go-to for tweaking whenever I wanted to try out new techniques, hop combinations, or yeast strains.
Any kind of variable that I could adjust, I would first test on the Atomic Amber. My goal was always to see how these various changes affected all aspects of the beer, be it the aroma, appearance, mouthfeel, or flavor.
Why You Need a House Beer
Overall, though, the Atomic Amber helped me to realize the value of having a house beer—that’s the one you brew over and over and know inside and out, so you can easily identify the impact of any adjustments.
Your house beer is also the one for which you take meticulous notes—on the recipe, of course, but also… How did the brew day go? How was the weather? Did you mill differently? How did the mash go? Were there any accidents or interruptions that might affect the beer—for worse or better? How do those changes compare to previous iterations or to the original?
Sometimes I would enter these tweaked Atomic Ambers into competitions because it was vital to me to get feedback from qualified judges. Sometimes these tweaks were total misses—and as much as it stung to lose a competition and get an ego check, those misses all helped me to become a better brewer.
And, for me, that’s always been one of the two reasons I homebrew—to have fun, of course, but also just to become a better brewer. Those are my goals, anyway, and I’ve found the best way to achieve both of them is to have a house beer.
Think of it this way: Your house beer is the one you can practically brew in your sleep. It’s the one that helps you to fully get a handle on processes such as milling, mashing, yeast pitching, fermentation temperatures, and so on. It’s also the one that helps you to get acquainted with ingredients, including hops in various forms, yeast strains, grains, sugars, and malt extracts. Having a house beer also helps you to dial in your brewing equipment and how you use it—cooler mash tun or brew-in-a-bag, stovetop versus electric or propane, buckets or carboys or conicals, bottling or kegging, and so on. The best way to try a new piece of gear is to brew your house beer with it.
The possible variables are infinite—water treatment, mash temperatures, pH adjustment, to name just a few more—and your house beer is the perfect place to test each one.
Your style of house beer doesn’t need to be mine. If you don’t have one in mind, I’d suggest it should be a style that’s flexible enough for adjustments yet doesn’t obscure those adjustments, so you can see, smell, or taste them.
Most importantly, though, it should be one that you’re happy to have on hand and enjoy brewing. If there’s a style you get bored with brewing or drinking… probably not the best choice. This should be your go-to beer—the one you could drink anytime, anywhere.
Those are pretty basic guidelines, really, for the beer that could become the most valuable tool in your brewing arsenal.
My House Amber
It may not be so popular anymore, but in my view, American amber ale is one of the most approachable and versatile styles to come out of the U.S. microbrewing movement.
Born in California in the early 1980s, it was an early alternative to pale ales and blonde ales as well as porters and stouts. Mendocino’s Red Tail was one of the first, in 1983, with its attractive label featuring a majestic red-tailed hawk in a landing pose, clutching hops and grains in its talons. Red Tail had the crisp bite of a pale ale with a malt-forward depth more like brown ale—a great example of both ample character and balance.
Much like Anchor Liberty Ale, New Albion Pale Ale, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Red Tail took a style perceived as traditional and gave it new life with Pacific Northwest hops, especially Cascade—and it was American homebrewers who had laid the groundwork for that in the 1970s, reinterpreting British styles with the ingredients they could get.
From there, red and amber ales took off—rich in color, flavorful but not heavy, and distinctly American in their hop character. The hallmark is a deep copper-to-reddish hue, often crowned with a creamy off-white head.
As IPAs and other hop-forward beers have gone paler and leaner, and as craft brewers have reduced their use of caramel malts, American amber ales have become increasingly rare—but that’s another reason why we homebrew: to drink the kinds of beers that are hard to get.
To summarize the guidelines and give you some targets:
- An American amber ale should have some caramel/toffee-like aroma to go with the citrus-pine of classic C-hops, such as Cascade, Centennial, or Chinook.
- The backbone of the flavor is a toasty, slightly sweet malt character, often with layers of biscuit or bread crust, or an undertone of light roast; hops should add a noticeable but not dominant bitterness, with flavors that can include grapefruit zest and resinous pine.
- The beer should be medium-bodied and smooth with moderate carbonation.
- BJCP specs: 4.5–6.2 percent ABV, 25–40 IBUs, and a color of 10–17 SRM.
- Great American Beer Festival specs: 4.4–6.1 percent ABV, 25–45 IBUs, and a color of 8–18 SRM.
These ranges give you some room to experiment—some versions lean malty and sweet, while others push toward a hoppier profile. And whatever style you choose, that’s just what you want in a house beer—some room to play while you hone your brewing experience.
