California Steam Beer a.k.a. California Common Beer

California steam beer was the bridge between those old styles and the new craft beer movement. This beer type, introduced in the later part of the 19th century, only reached its full potential in the 1970s as the last great American style of the old days and the first great American style of the new craft beer era.

Steam beer originated in about 1851, a little after the California Gold Rush started. It is actually an ale, warm fermented, but with bottom working (lager) yeast instead of the usual top working (ale) yeast normal for that beverage. These mid-nineteenth century immigrant German brewers finished out their beer, in warm California, as they had been taught: that is by lagering it in cool cellars (but not as long, and not as cold). Those German brewers were lager-addicted. In Germany, they had even started lagering their top fermented ales (altbier) and in this new country they were forced to brew bottom-fermented beer at warm temperatures, where cold ferments and lagering were unfeasible.

As time went by, this new beer came to be kräusened in the German (lager) style, rather than primed in the English (ale) fashion. Priming is the addition of sugar to the finished beer, which then causes a ferment in the container, resulting in a small increase to the alcohol content and the carbonation of the finished beer. German brewers felt obligated, even in this new country that had adopted them, to follow the ancient Reinheitsgebot purity law. Sugar was verbotten, so a small volume of kräusen (new fermenting beer) was added directly to the casks before bunging (closing) and delivery. This additional ferment gave the product a rich, creamy head, especially so because the beer was served warmer and therefore under much heavier pressure (carbonation) than we are accustomed to seeing these days.

A beer writer of the time, John Buchner, writing in the Western Brewer, in 1898, gives us the scoop: “Steam Beer is bottom fermenting at high temperatures of 60-69F/15-20C… [the beer] is allowed 10-12 days…from mash tub to glass.” “Steam” refers to strong CO2 pressure 50-60-lbs/in2 caused by kräusening with green beer as priming, thus building steam. Buchner was no fan: “not a connoisseur’s drink… tastes better than raw hopped, bitter and turbid ales.”

Steam beer was a bridge between ales and lagers of the nineteenth century and also a bridge to the twentieth. Even though ice machines became available by the 1870s, steam beer remained popular in San Francisco and other parts of California and, indeed, the nation.

For readers in their 20s or 30s: way back at the dawn of the current craft brewing age, the mid-1970s, there were but two native US beer styles, the blonde cream ale and a copper-colored style that used to be called “steam beer.” For legal reasons, the latter is now called California common beer, although that term does not appear on the label.

Today, there are more than a few all-American, homegrown beer styles produced by innovative brewers. Most of these styles developed out of a very simple process: take a recipe for an established style—say, wheat beer—do something to it, and see what happens. If enough happened, a new, American version of an old style was born.

Cream ale and California common, though, stand alone as original US styles. They are certainly not exotic like the Belgian lambic, enormous like barley wine, or full of character like dry stout. They are like Kristina Abernathy, the southern blonde Weather Channel honey, not Liz Hurley, the English model and actress with a wild streak as long as the Mississippi.

Don’t get me wrong. The world needs Liz Hurleys to keep life interesting and stir the blood. But, men, if you have nice, respectable, God-fearing parents, whom would you choose to bring home to meet them? The foreign, dark-haired, ultra-sexy Liz or the cute all-American beauty with stable, marrying qualities, Kristina?

That’s the sort of beers these are—like the pretty girl next door.

Cream ale and California common are worthy alternatives to some everyday drinking beers. You could substitute cream ale for standard and premium American lager, and California common for other copper-colored ales and lagers.

Cream ale is categorized an ale hybrid; and California common, a lager hybrid.