Malt & Grain

A California Common smells of fresh bread crust and a touch of caramel. That's down to the malt. Malt refers to barley that is allowed to germinate and is then dried in a kiln so its starch can later turn into sugar. The hotter the kiln, the darker and more roasted the malt.

The backbone of Steam Beer is pale barley malt. A portion of caramel malt is added as well. It's heated while moist so the sugars in the kernel liquefy and caramelize during drying. This gives the brewer a color of 18 to 28 EBC, meaning amber to light copper.

The original gravity for the style ranges between 11.9 and 13.3 degrees Plato. Original gravity refers to the dissolved sugar in the wort before fermentation, and it determines how much alcohol can ultimately develop. Here that yields 4.5 to 5.5 percent by volume. That's medium-bodied, noticeably more than a light beer.

What matters is what the malt is not meant to do. Unlike a smoked beer or a stout, no roasted note takes center stage. The bread and caramel aroma serves as the counterpart to the hop bitterness. In Anchor Steam, this balance was the house's hallmark for decades.

For a West Coast IPA, by contrast, Bay Area brewers choose very pale malt with little caramel. It's meant to leave room for the hops. The beer becomes drier and clearer as a result, while the California Common retains a soft, bready center. Two beers from the same city, two different approaches to malt.

Grains other than barley have no place in classic Steam Beer. Many Bay Area breweries, including Magnolia and 21st Amendment, now build their recipes on the same simple framework, varying only the malt bill.