Cream Ale 2025 – Part I: Recipe Development

Back in 2020 like many people, I took to homebrewing using a popular small batch all grain kit. After knocking out this initial espresso stout, I was hooked and started building my own recipes with help from the book Brew by James Morton.

One of my more successful brew days was a California Common. Reasonably, I liked how close it was to a lager without many of complications required to make one. But I soon got hooked on making Belgian styles and began to label basically all BJCP category 1 as styles just for US homebrewers and perhaps as a bit dull. I also felt their historical significance was overstated, believing that if they were truly any good, they would be more commercially available and not relegated to mostly homebrewing. 

But it’s now 2025, I’ve grown as a homebrewer, and I understand where I was wrong and why these historical styles are still so popular with homebrewers of all levels:

• Their proximity to pils makes them very approachable, not just to homebrewers but to those they intend to share their brews with.
• Their unconventional use of yeast makes them accessible to beginners and those with limited equipment/space.
• Their recipes are often simple, affordable and many ingredients can be substituted where not available.

Last month’s homebrew club meeting involved a presentation on Cream Ales which put them in a new perspective for me. I won’t delve into the history of the style as many more qualified people have done so already, but as with the above, Cream Ale is truly an ideal style for homebrewers because of the following:

• They were developed amidst a rise in popularity for German styles and aim to replicate their crisp and refreshing qualities keeping them approachable. 
• You can use lager yeast (fermented warmer than usual), ale yeast (so long as it’s kept clean) or even a mixture of the two, all of which makes the style open to interpretation and flexible to skills and equipment.
• Whilst maize seems to be a key ingredient; this is still quite optional and could be even substituted with rice or other adjuncts if needed. The hops too should probably be US varieties, but due how moderate the hop quality is you can probably get away with anything if applied appropriately. 

Another interesting thing is, that despite their simplicity, the vital statics in the BJCP style guidelines are broad. Meaning that if you mess up your efficiency, colour or bitterness to a degree you can still be within the style. But I think the most important thing to note is that Cream Ale relies on a clean fermentation, not just in a sense of a pure culture but also a very neutral yeast profile. As someone who brews without temperature control and often this poses a challenge but one that can be made less daunting by brewing in the winter and using a clean ale strain. So, with this in mind, I feel encouraged to kick off 2025 by remedying my past assumptions and to try my hand at brewing a Cream Ale.

Here is my recipe and approach:

Volume: 10L

PBG: 1.034

OG: 1.044

FG: 1.008

ABV: 4.7%

IBUs: 16.9

SRM: 3.1 

Water:

Mineral Water

Malt:

1.70 kg – Crisp Malting – Extra Pale Malt – 85%

0.30 kg – Crisp Malting – Flaked Torrefied Maize – 15%

It is very hard to get 6-row barley in the UK which would have been the typical choice. Whilst a lager malt would also be suitable, I’ve found this extra pale ale malt to be quite muted in the past and think it is actually good at providing low-to-moderate malt sweetness without the need for a longer boil to drive off DMS.

15% Maize feels a bit conservative to me but seeing as 20% is the max recommended contribution and that I’ve not used Maize before it is probably a good position to be in. 

Hops:

8 g – Fuggle – 30 min

4 g – Fuggle – 10 min

An American hop might have been the more appropriate choice, but the guidelines do state continental varieties too. Personally, with the hop character being such a subtle component I can’t justify using hops from further afield so UK fuggles will have to do. 

I’ve also put the IBUs at the higher end of the scale as I personally prefer cleaner ales to have a bit of bite. 

Yeast:

Fermentis – Safale – American Ale Yeast US-05 + 5g of yeast nutrient 

I haven’t used US-05 in a long while but early on I had some okay results brewing IPAs at room temperature during the colder months. Currently the cupboard I ferment in sits at around 22 degrees which should work fine in this instance. To encourage a super clean fermentation I’ll add a healthy dose of yeast nutrient too. 

In theory, you could pull this off using kveik (Voss, Hornindal, Lutra all sound appropriate), which is something I’d typically have done. But I don’t think there really is any need and these options are already overused as shortcuts in modern styles.

Technique:

I’ll run this as a single infusion mash at 65-67 degrees, probably with no sparge at all, followed by a short 30-minute boil. The wort will then be cooled with groundwater in the sink and moved to the fermenter to reach room temperature before pitching the yeast. This may seem somewhat slapdash but as mentioned above there is a margin for inefficiency, and I feel there is a relaxed ethos to the style which should be respected. 

This will be my first brew for a couple months, so I’ll be using it to stretch my legs before taking on some future projects.