Cream Ale

[lloydhudson]

Just tapped the first pint of a "12000 Click' cream ale that I made from a recipe purloined from somebody on HBT that I do not remember the name of.
However while the flavors etc are all fine the beer resembles stale grapefruit juice. Yellow to orange color and no translucency at all. I kegged it with sugar priming. (Which I never do, always force carb)
Let it set in fermentation room at about 70° for a week. 10psi on guage. Chilled in Keezer for 4 days. 36°.
Question is, I have never had a commercial Cream Ale. Is it always occluded or is there still residual crap in my product. Should I filter it? Party in 8 days and I was anticipating this being my offering to BMC invitees.

 

[davekippen]

Commercially these are always crystal clear. BJCP style guidelines say clear too, but who cares as long as it tastes good!

 

[Yooper]

Just tapped the first pint of a "12000 Click' cream ale that I made from a recipe purloined from somebody on HBT that I do not remember the name of.
However while the flavors etc are all fine the beer resembles stale grapefruit juice. Yellow to orange color and no translucency at all. I kegged it with sugar priming. (Which I never do, always force carb)
Let it set in fermentation room at about 70° for a week. 10psi on guage. Chilled in Keezer for 4 days. 36°.
Question is, I have never had a commercial Cream Ale. Is it always occluded or is there still residual crap in my product. Should I filter it? Party in 8 days and I was anticipating this being my offering to BMC invitees.

A "cream ale" is a light, crisp, almost-lager-like ale version of BMC. If you've got a stale grapefruit murky beer, that isn't a cream ale. If you can lager it while carbing for the next 8 days, that would help. I always lager my cream ales.

 

[lloydhudson]

Thanks, Neighbor suggested that possibly no headspace never gave yeast chance to finish. Contemplating bleeding off existing CO2 and see if it will clear, or filtering and force carbing.

 

[davekippen]

Thanks, Neighbor suggested that possibly no headspace never gave yeast chance to finish. Contemplating bleeding off existing CO2 and see if it will clear, or filtering and force carbing.

Im not the master brewer like some on here, but I have NEVER heard of headspace effecting yeast performance. There are generally only a few things that stall yeast performance - they run out of sugar or they get cold (ale yeast, that is).

Bleeding off CO2 wont do anything for clearing! Try cold crashing as mentioned above. Thats about all you can do at this point besides filtering. Good luck! :rockin: