Recipe: Wolf’s Ridge Clear Sky & Daybreak

“Clear Sky was designed to be a true American cream ale,” says Wolf’s Ridge head brewer Chris Davison, “with a heavy corn addition, clean fermentation, and easy drinkability. It serves as a delicious, no-frills beer that acts as an excellent canvas to showcase a multitude of flavors.”

ALL GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.008
IBUs: 14
ABV: 5%
[PAYWALL]
MALT/GRAIN BILL
4.1 lb (1.9 kg) Avangard Pilsner
2.9 lb (1.3 kg) Crisp Torrified Flaked Maize
1.2 lb (544 g) Avangard Vienna
8 oz (227 g) rice hulls
3 oz (85 g) Weyermann acidulated

HOPS & ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
0.35 oz (10 g) Willamette at first wort hopping [8 IBUs]
0.5 oz (14 g) Willamette at 20 minutes [6 IBUs]
1 Whirlfloc tablet at 5 minutes

YEAST
White Labs WLP001 California Ale

DIRECTIONS
Mill the grains and mash at 148°F (64°C) for 60 minutes. Vorlauf until the runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge and top up as necessary to get about 6.5 gallons (25 liters) of wort—or more, depending on your evaporation rate. Boil 90 minutes, adding hops and Whirlfloc according to the schedule. After the boil, stir to conduct a whirlpool, then allow 10 minutes to settle. Chill to about 65°F (18°C), aerate well, and pitch the yeast. Ferment at 66°F (19°C) for about 6 days, raising the temperature to 70°F (21°C) toward the end of fermentation. Then crash, package, and carbonate to about 2.8 volumes.

VARIATION: DAYBREAK
After cold-crashing the beer, add 1–3 vanilla beans and 4 oz (113 g) of locally roasted, whole bean, light or medium roast coffee in a weighted, sanitized, nylon sack—directly to the corny keg, if kegging, or to secondary if bottling. Steep for 2–3 days.
Vanilla beans: The quantity depends on the quality; larger, juicier beans go a lot farther than short, dried-out ones. Split the bean lengthwise down the middle and add without further fuss, or else dice up the two halves. No need to scrape out the “caviar innards”—the entire bean is full of precious oils and flavor.
Coffee: Fresh, high-quality beans are paramount. Ideally, smell and taste the coffee before choosing it. Avoid dark roasts or Sumatran coffee—the flavors will overwhelm the delicate cream ale and may add unwanted green-pepper notes. We typically use a Colombian medium roast coupled with a rotating light roast, often from Costa Rica, Peru, Ethiopia, or Guatemala—but we use whatever works best.
Steeping: This process works best in cold, carbonated beer—so, ideally, you would place the sack in your keg while carbonating, then rack the beer to a new keg a few days later. Otherwise, add this to your finished beer/secondary, and be ready to rack off into kegs or bottles within a few days. More time on the coffee can lead to overly intense, acrid, or astringent flavors. However, the vanilla can improve with more time, so adjust according to taste.

BREWER’S NOTES
More variations: Daybreak and all of our cream-ale variants begin with the base recipe above. If you’re adding fruit, add whole fruit or puree near the end of fermentation to allow the beer to ferment out all the newly added sugars. Otherwise, all our ingredient additions go in the brite tank—so you can use a serving keg or secondary fermentor.
Grain bill: We prefer to use Avangard malts for this beer, but we’ve also had success using Briess or Weyermann. Feel free to showcase your own favorite base malts.
Fermentation: The overall goal is to make the cleanest beer possible. That means a lengthy vorlauf, careful attention to yeast pitch-rate, and fermenting on the low end of our yeast’s recommended temperature range.