Golden Gate Retriever

I’ve been wanting to brew some lighter beers for the summer, notably because of the low-gravity beers competition my brew club will be having at our summer grill-out event. Coupling that motivation with the ambient temps currently in my basement (55-60*) for fermentation and my options are limited to a select few styles. Since I’d never tried my hand at a California Common or “Steam beer” before, I decided now was the time.

This beer will definitely qualify for the aforementioned competition. With an OG of just 1.045, it’ll be one of the lightest beer I’ve ever made. Even if it ferments way down below 1.010, it’ll still struggle to come in at more than 5%. This batch was the first time I tried a true batch sparge. I don’t think it changed my efficiency much for the worse and I ended up saving at least an hour on my brew day by employing this method instead of fly sparging.

My buddy Dave was over helping on this brew day and the one to name this batch. This is the first time someone besides myself or my wife has named a batch of Barking Dog beer. Great idea Dave! Here’s the recipe:

Here’s the batch just after pitch:

As I was cleaning up, I became more dissatisfied by the volume yield so I boiled about a gallon of water for 10 minutes and cooled it to about 60* and added it to the fermenter. Doing so brought my OG from 1.048 down to 1.045 but I was fine with that. Happy that I’ll end up with more bottles and unconcerned of the ABV. Also, with adding some of my own whole leave hops grown last summer, I’m unsure of how hoppy this batch will be. It might be good that I watered it down. Here is the batch a few hours after pitch when the extra gallon of sterile water was added:

Finally, here’s the batch about 24 hours after the pitch:

Things are rockin’ and rollin’ now, airlock gurgling every second or two at just 56*!