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Brewing A Beer Style You’ve Never Tasted – Kentucky Common

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How do you build a recipe for a beer style you’ve never tasted?

How do you do you know it tastes right?Grits

I decided to brew a Kentucky Common, a historic style that was recently added to the BJCP guidelines. I didn’t pick this style because my friends don't know what it should taste like so if it sucked, I could easily blame it on bad historic records.

No, I picked this style because it had elements of homebrewing that I never tried before.

  • 6-Row Barley
  • Corn Grits
  • A Cereal Mash

Where to start?

The new BJCP guidelines provided a quick historical review of the Kentucky Common. It dispels the notion that the beer was brewed with a sour mash. It does describe the beer as a quick, inexpensive beer. And 6 to 8 days from mash to kegging? Damn that’s quick.

Here the specs:

  • 60% Six-Row Malt
  • 36% to 38% Corn Grits
  • 1.5% to 2% Black Malt
  • 0% to 1.5% Caramel Malt
  • .2 lbs of Western Hops for bittering
  • ¼ lbs per barrel New York  hops for flavor (Cluster?)
  • German or Bohemian hops for aroma
  • Cereal Mash
  • 2-hour boil
  • Late addition of dark malts

Kentuckymash

  • OG: 1.044 to 1.055
  • FG: 1.014 to 1.018
  • IBU: 15 to 20
  • SRM: 11 to 20
  • ABV: 4 to 4.4%

Armed with the historical specifications, I set out to build my recipe.

Kentucky Common Recipe

Batch Details

  • 5-Gallon Batch
  • OG 1.044
  • FG 1.010
  • ABV 4.38%
  • IBU 27
  • SRM 12.4
  • Based on a 75% efficiency
  • 60 minute boil

Gravitycheck

Grain Bill

  • 5 lbs (61.1%) American 6-Row
  • 3 lbs (36.6%) Grits
  • .18 lbs (2.3%) German De-Husked Carafa III

Hops

  • .5 oz Northern Brewer 9.9 AA @ 60 minutes
  • .5 oz Northern Brewer 9.9 AA @ 5 minutes

Yeast

White Labs Cream Ale Yeast WLP080 w/2 liter starter made 24-hrs before the brew day

Process

This was a two-step mash, a combined cereal and standard mash

Cereal Mash

  • Mixed 10 oz of the 6-row into the 3-lbs of the corn grits.
  • Added 96-ozs of water stirred in and raised the temperature to 137 degrees and held for 15-minutes.
  • During the 15-minute rest, I started the mash for the remaining grains, see below
  • After the 15-minutes hold, I slowly raised the temperature to a soft boil. I added 6-oz of water during this process to thin it out the mix and allow easier stirring.
  • I held a soft boil for 30-minutes and stirred during the entire time.

Soft boil = The mix was thick and could not maintain a rolling boil. It would build heat within the mash and create mini surface eruptions. In trying the keep the entire mash from exploding, I was constantly adjusting the heat up and down while stirring.

Mash

While the cereal mash was in the 15-minute rest I began the normal mash.

  • Heated 6.25 quarts of water to 160 degrees, and added the remaining 6-row malt stirred and held the mash temperature at 155 degrees for 60 minutes.
  • At minute 40, I added the grits and 6-row from the cereal mash.  The one thing to keep in mind is to make sure the cereal mash temperature has dropped below 155 degrees.  I did this by occasionally stirring the cereal mash to dissipate some of the heat.  I also placed the pot in a water bath for about 15-minutes.
  • After combining the cereal mash to the regular mash, the temperature dropped down a few degrees. With my system, I have a burner on the mash tun and was able to bring the mash back up to 155.
  • At the 60-minute mark I added the Carafa malt to the top of the mash and began a 60-minute fly sparge with 170 degree water.

I pitched the yeast at 66 degrees and let the temperature rise to 68 degrees and held at that temp for 2 weeks and then kegged.

Kentuckyfinished

Analysis

Color

Straight up copper, a few shades lighter than a beer like Newcastle. While it's still within the BJCP guidelines, it's a little darker than I was going for. The photo looks darker than it really is.

Aroma

Slight corny sweetness, with a mild hop spice.

Flavor

Malt forward with a clean bitterness.  Neither the malt or the hops take over the beer. Clean finish with little to no residual hop bitterness.

Mouthfeel

The body is light, but not hallow. The beer needs to be on the high side of carbonation.  I kegged this beer, and tasted as it carbed. Very crushable at just under 4.5% ABV

Overall

The flavor and mouthfeel give you the impression that this is a higher ABV beer. I'm very happy with the end results and have received positive feedback from my friends who have tried it.

Final Thoughts

On the next batch I will change out the Carafa, for brown malt.  This was a suggestion from the head brewer and owner of Bootleggers Brewery (Thanks Aaron and Robert for the feedback).

I will also try to simplify the cereal mash by using only one vessel for both.

Have you tasted or brewed a Kentucky Common? If not, think you'll give one a shot now?

Kentuckykeg

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Comments

  1. i have never heard of this type of beer, yet feel challenged to brew it. I think I will try to make it this spring and then try a second batch replacing the last hop addition with3 oz of fresh native yarrow flower buds. I will let you know how it goes. Peace. Joe Wood

    Reply

  2. This is awesome and has inspired me to give brewing this style a try. Thanks for sharing.

    I did find one inconsistency in the “Where to start?” section of your write up though. You list New York hops (Cluster) as a bittering hop for the style, however the BJCP write-up on the style you linked to and the 2015 style guidelines both list that historically Western hops were for bittering and the New York hops were the late addition flavoring hops.

    Reply

  3. Dry Dock Brewing Company ( one of my local breweries ) recently had a beer they called a Kentucky Common. I enjoyed it. Can’t say how accurate they were to style, but it was tasty.

    With the new Historical Beers section of the BJCP style guidelines, I’ve been thinking about brewing some of these styles (or what I imagine the style is based on a text description)

    That pdf you link to (NHC2014-kycommon-handout) is really cool. I’ve never seen that sort of document on the BJCP site. Is there a list of those docs somewhere?

    Reply

  4. I am not a beer historian, just a geek —Think about this for a minute. The Ohio River flows through Louisville. Freight in the 1800s would travel by river. In that area of the country, there were abundant canals for freight from upstate New York to the Ohio. Cluster hops were certainly grown in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The booming industries after the Civil war were steel, railroads, and farm equipment. Tens of thousands of factories dotted the great lakes, and the major rivers. It would have been foolish to use rails to send hops from the west coast, when there was a ready supply with such good access to transportation. Another thought. California had its own boom too, and they had their share of working class men drinking their version (California Common). California breweries used the western varieties, while Midwestern breweries relied upon the Cluster. Even today, typical “Wisconsin” beers use cluster. Until the MBC beers took over, that was the taste of old time beers, which, like Kentucky Common, prefer to finish with noble hops (Spalt, Hallertau, Hersbruker, Tetnanger, Saaz, etc…

    Reply

  5. Do you think that i can avoid cereal mash using flaked maize.
    And using norther brewer hops for bittering and aroma.
    Thanks!

    Reply

  6. Robert, you seem to still be checking for feedback on your (very decent) article so I’ll add my $.02:

    I made a Kentucky Common based on the same article as a way of using a gift of 6-row malt. When I was awarded one of our club’s taps at the local beer festival I did 100 L of it and got fantastic word of mouth interest. People just loved having a session beer amongst all of the Xtreem beers elsewhere. I like it with lager yeast but fermented at ale temperature.

    Regarding the cereal mash, you would have less trouble with the boiling grits bombs during the boil if you did the cereal mash hold at 158F for 10 minutes. The objective is to saccharify all of the flour amongst the grits so it doesn’t thicken up on you as you’re just reaching boil. But I still roll my sleeves down and keep gloves and goggles handy!

    Reply

    • Thanks for the feedback Sean. I might be giving that a try, if I brew it again. I’m no longer writing for this blog, but I’m glad people are still reading and providing their own take.

      Cheers

      Reply

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