Anchor Steam

I brewed a version of Anchor Steam tonight. It has been years since I actually drank one. Apparently, Anchor Steam is a true American beer. A beer unique in style to anything else and not a derivative of European beers. I'm willing to believe that.

I like to follow recipes during the first attempt or two athttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif cloning a beer. This time I used Clone Brews by Tess and Mark Szamatulski. It's a great book. The recipes is as follows:

Steeped 14 oz of 80°L crystal malt at 150° for 20 minutes. Sparged with 1.5..... wait.... what the hell am I doing... I'm a scientist... actually, a chemist!!!!! JACS or JOC would never accept an experimental written like this. Maybe Tet. Let. , but surely not Org Let.

Experimental Section
All materials were purchased from Midwest Brewing Supply in Minneapolis, MN. All ingredients were used as supplied. The northern brewer hop pellets contained 6.8% alpha acids.

General Procedure for the Activation of the Yeast
The California Lager Yeast was purchased from Wyeast (#2112) and fermented in the presence of 28 grams of an aqueous solution of plain light dry malt extract for 24 hours at 20° C. Expulsion of carbon dioxide gas indicated the yeast's viability for fermentation.

Brewing Procedure
Crushed crystal malt (400 g) was added to a flat bottom stainless steel flask containing 3.78 L of water heated to 68° C over a natural gas stove. After 20 minutes, this solution was filtered through cheesecloth. The filtrate was washed with 3.78 L of water at 60° C. To the reaction, Alexander's Sun Country pale liquid malt extract syrup (1.8 L) and plain light dry malt extract (1.4 kg) was added. An additional 3.78 L of water at 100° C was added to the reaction flask. The solution was stirred and heated to 103° C. To this boiling mixture, northern brewer hop pellets (48 g) were added. The solution was boiled for 45 minutes. Additional northern brewer hop pellets (17 g), Irish moss (5 g) and an 1.0 L of water at 100° C were added to the reaction flask. After boiling for 14 minutes, a final addition of norther brewer hop pellets (17 g) was added. This solution was boiled for 1 minute. The heat was removed and the wort was cooled rapidly to 32° C using a wort chiller. The solution was transfered to a 25L fermentation flask. The wort was diluted with 7.6 L of water and allowed to cool. When the temperature of the wort was 25° C, the activate yeast solution was added to the wort. The reaction was allowed to ferment at 18-20°C for 7 days.


The work-up procedure and characterization data will be published in a future edition of this blog.