Cream ale is easy drinking, which to some means boring. But in the same way German helles can display brewing skill—precise mashing and fermentation showcasing fresh ingredients through balanced flavors—so too can cream ale be the palette for perfection.
Is cream ale simple? Maybe. But that simplicity is exactly what makes it hard to brew well. And that is why beer drinkers should love it.
The History of Cream Ale
The modern story of cream ale begins in 1960, when Rochester, New York’s Genesee Brewing released cream ale. For a time, Genny Cream—as its fans call it—was the best-selling ale in America. It has won multiple medals at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup.
Genesee Cream Ale is the archetype of the beer style. Pale ale means Sierra Nevada. Steam means Anchor. And cream ale means Genesee.
But the real story of cream ale begins over 100 years prior to Genny Cream.
“In our area of the country, in the mid 1800s or so, lager was really booming, and a lot of the brewers in our area were ale producers, and they needed something to compete with those crisp, clean lagers,” says Andy Cook, founder of Swiftwater Brewing in Rochester.
“So they essentially invented cream ale,” says Cook. “The base malt and malt recipe is very similar to what became American lager: lots of pale barley and a pretty healthy dose of corn. I think sometimes rice or sugar are used, but I really think of cream ale as having a pretty good chunk of corn. It’s very traditional for American brewing, I would say. And it was fermented with ale yeast, but at a colder temperature, so it wound up nice and crispy and clean and chuggable.”
Despite brewing in the shadow of the Genesee giant, Cook is proud to brew a cream ale at Swiftwater. “We as Rochester brewers really claim it as our style,” he says. “This is our community beer. We should all participate in making this our beer. And I think it’s really cool because the New York State Brewers Association has fostered that through their competition and they really want to adopt that as New York State’s native beer.”
Cook and Swiftwater have now taken over stewardship of the Celebration of Cream Ales, a beer festival started by Roc Brewing. “Maybe a year or two before we opened, a place called Roc Brewing that was right up the street opens, and I got to be really good friends with them around the time that we opened,” says Cook. “And they started a Celebration of Cream Ales, and we always participated in it. They reached out to 20 or 30 other local brewers and asked them to make their version of cream ale, and the implied message was ‘get weird with it if you want to.’”
“When, unfortunately, Roc Brewing closed a couple years ago, I reached out to the former owner and the head brewer at the time and I was like, ‘Do you mind if I bring it back?’ And they were fully supportive, so I can’t thank them enough for that,” says Cook.
Although many of the participating breweries stick to a classic, true-to-style cream ale, others do take the opportunity to “get weird with it.” Cream ale with fruit. Dry-hopped cream ale. Even cream ale with lactose. The clean flavors of cream ale can serve as a blank canvas for a creative brewer. Cook himself once made an Arnold Palmer cream ale with lemon and tea.
Hold The Cream…Or Don’t
Lemon and tea aside, the ingredients of cream ale can be quite simple, though they can also be overcomplicated.
“Historically, six-row barley was used in anything with adjuncts,” says Cook. “Now with modern malting science, it really doesn’t matter. So we use a two-row pilsner [malt]. We have messed around with a six-row pilsner [malt] in the past. And as far as diastatic power, I didn’t really see any difference. I feel like modern two-row has more than enough for what you need.”
As for corn, “We’ve used everything from modern off the shelf flaked corn to […] an heirloom malted corn,” says Cook. “We made a dark cream ale with an amber malted corn from Valley Malt in Massachusetts.” A brewer Cook works with made cream ale with nixtamalized corn, which is whole kernels of corn soaked in food-grade lye. Anything goes when it comes to the corn in cream ale.
A four-hour drive away from Rochester, in Hawley, Pennsylvania, Wallenpaupack Brewing also has a cream ale, as its flagship beer. Head brewer Logan Ackerley says the beer is popular with the tourists in the area looking for whatever is light or most similar to the macro lager they are used to drinking. While many of Wallenpaupack’s customers might not appreciate the beauty of Paupack Cream Ale, that doesn’t mean Ackerley doesn’t care about the beer. He brews the beer with a malt bill which he says is “overcomplicated.”
“We’ve been changing this recipe for the last nine years, so we’re still constantly tweaking it,” says Ackerley. “But because [our water is] high in sulfate, a lot of our beers tended to go on the dry, bitter side. So we use 20% corn, which is on the high end for what the style guidelines say. But we also have some dextrin malt, a little bit of Vienna because we want to get that sweet malty thing that you’re looking for in a cream ale.” The recipe used to have acidulated malt, but that has been cut back to “just a touch.”
“So it’s pils, corn, Vienna, dextrin, and just a touch of acidulated now,” says Ackerley. “Which is, like I said, probably a little more complicated than the style calls for.” The complex malt bill is compensated for with simplicity in corn. “It’s flaked corn. It’s nothing fancy,” says Ackerley. As for why 20%, Ackerley says, “It’s a pretty significant amount, but we found that without that, we really don’t get that really pleasant sweetness that you’re looking for.”
The hops in a cream ale would have historically been a descendant of a noble variety grown in New York State. Cook uses Triumph, which is indeed a descendant of the noble varieties that were bred in the State. But at Wallenpaupack, Ackerley uses a surprising hop in the cream ale.
“The variety of hops is probably the only thing that we haven’t changed about this beer, and it’s entirely Centennial,” says Ackerley. “Just a 60-minute addition. Centennial was always the hop from the start, so we haven’t messed with that.”
Ackerley acknowledges that a more traditional hop choice might have been Cluster or Magnum, but “being a 60-minute edition … you wouldn’t know just by drinking it that it is Centennial. It isn’t citrusy or anything like that,” he says.
As for water, Cook says, “Rochester water is pretty neutral. We’re pretty fortunate that we have a blank slate to work with…. So I really don’t do a whole lot to the water. I add a little smidge of calcium to promote flocculation and yeast health, but really that’s about it.”
While Cook is aware some breweries have experimented with adding lactose to put the “cream” in “cream ale,” he says that would not be traditional.
The Perfect Cream Ale
Em Sauter, the artist behind Pints and Panels and co-host of the All About Beer Podcast, called Wallenpaupack Paupack Cream Ale “perfection.” But Ackerley has tweaked the beer for nine years in hopes of making it even more perfect.
“I want better foam and head retention,” he says. “Using 20% of an adjunct makes that kind of tough. We are messing with some Tetrahop on the small scale just to see if that’s an option to get a nicer pour on the beer.”
The defining characteristic of the perfect cream ale is corn flavor and drinkability. “There should be a solid corn character in there,” says Cook. Ackerley, for his part, increased the corn percentage of Wallenpaupack’s cream ale from 12% to 20%. “Don’t be afraid to give it a shot up at the higher threshold, because it’s really unique to this beer,” he says of corn. “If you’re putting it in there, make sure they can actually taste it.” As a bonus, Ackerley says it adds to the drinkability of the beer. “That sweetness just makes it very quaffable,” he says.
For a time, cream ale was maligned by craft beer lovers. Too simple. Too similar to macro beer. But that simplicity means approachability, which can mean sales of craft beer to new audiences. And the subtleties of the style mean that small changes in brewing and recipe make noticeable changes to the beer. While some brewers claim German or Czech lager styles prove a brewer’s skill “since there’s nothing to hide behind,” the modern equivalent is America’s original beer style, cream ale.
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