California Common – The First American Craft Beer

The California Common.

While technically it has been brewed in some shape or form since the 1850s Gold Rush, the version we are familiar with is from the 1970s. This version is considered the first American ‘craft’ beer and is made by one of America’s oldest breweries, Anchor Brewing.

It should be noted that California Common is more widely known as ‘Steam Beer’ because that was what it was called for so long. Anchor revived the style and trademarked ‘Anchor Steam,’ thus creating the need for a different style name.

California Common did not pop out of nowhere, though. Steam Beer has been made by many breweries in and around the San Francisco region for some time now, exactly where Anchor is located. Anchor was one of the only breweries to survive from the 19th century and, in fact, revive the style, so I think we can let them keep the original name.

Where did the name Steam Beer come from? It is widely known that Anchor was one of the few American breweries to continue to employ what is called a ‘coolship’. This is a large, shallow tray for pouring your hot boiling wort into. This tray was so wide, and located on the roof of Anchor’s brewhouse, that it had the effect of rapidly cooling the wort by exposing so much surface area of it to the cool Pacific Ocean breeze in San Francisco. Thus letting off a lot of steam. 

California Common is an amber colored, malty, moderately bitter, standard strength beer. What makes it truly unique, however, is that it uses lager yeast. Yes, this makes it a lager, but the process derives more flavor than your typical clean fermented lager.

Anchor ferments their Steam Beer with lager yeast, as would have been typical of many German immigrant brewers. They would bring their bottom fermenting lager yeast over to the States, but they do so at ale temperatures. This means that the typically clean, somewhat sulfury lager, is now sulfur-less and has a just perceptible fruity ester character to it. This makes it taste more like an ale, but a far more subtle one. 

It is meat and potato time. 

BJCP Guidelines for California Common

The BJCP Style Guidelines list the stats of California Common as the following:

IBU: 30 – 45

SRM: 9 – 14

OG: 1.048 – 1.054

FG: 1.011 – 1.014

ABV: 4.5% – 5.5%

Chicago Steam Recipe – All Grain

Here is our recipe for a Cream Ale called Chicago Steam:

Grains: 9.75 lbs 2-row

.5 lbs Caramel 80

Hops: 2 oz Northern Brewer

Yeast: WY2112 California Lager

For hopping, California Common, being as old of a style as it is, does not use any of the newer American, pine/grapefruit hops like Cascade, nor does it use any of the even newer citrusy/juicy hops like Citra. You want a classic old world hop, like Northern Brewer, which has evergreen, wood and mint characteristics. It is the exact hop used in Anchor Steam, which is exactly why we use it in our recipe too.

You’ll notice again that this recipe uses the more flavorful 2-row barley malt, as opposed to the 6-row malt that would have been much more common pre-prohibition. That is because we are following the more modern interpretation of a California Common from the 1970s. If you want to match the gold rush era Steam Beer, then I would suggest substituting out the 2-row for 6-row for a more rustic beer, and probably adding a lb of flaked corn.

Additionally, our recipe comes out at a light amber, whereas the style should be decidedly amber. This is a personal choice and how our recipe has been written since its inception some seven plus years ago. If you want that solid amber color along with adding some complexity in the form of toasty flavors, I recommend adding in a half pound of an amber (20-27L) malt and a half pound of a crystal light malt (38-44L).

A Final Note…Current Status of Anchor Steam

Before I go, I want to cover some current events regarding the California Common, or indeed, Steam Beer. Rather unfortunately, if I were to go looking for Anchor Steam at my nearest bottle shop, I would be unable to find it.

In the Summer of 2023, Anchor Brewing was shut down and waiting liquidation from the holdings of Sapporo. Fear not, however, in late Spring 2024, they were saved by the CEO and founder of Chobani, who purchased the brewery and is set to revive Anchor Steam, again! This marks another chapter of stubborn persistence for the California Common, but even without Anchor Brewing, as homebrewers, we can carry on the style’s truly American legacy in our pots, fermentors, and stomachs. 

To Steam Beer!