Daddy's Little Helper - Dangerous Cream Ale

Saturday we celebrated two of our great friends (and a third in utero) by hosting a baby shower in our backyard. There was a bunch of delicious food and we had a blast. For the occasion I brewed a Cream Ale that got, admittedly, a bit out of hand.

Cream ale is one of the few indigenous American styles of beer. A bit of a mix, it's the result of ale yeast being used to ferment a light golden beer that's made with barley malt and a rather high percentage of adjunct such as corn or rice. Hop presence is very low in aroma and flavor, but it does have a bit more hop bite than what you would expect from a light beer. The result is light in body and color, moderate in alcoholic strength, and very easy to drink. No huge flavors bog you down, so it's good for a hot day.

Now, my particular cream ale was meant to be all those things mentioned above, but something went wrong in process! I brewed as normal, but through a combination of generous malt extract packagers, and boiling off a bit more water than I'd calculated, the starting gravity was 1.070! That means there was enough sugar in solution to produce a beer over 7.5% alcohol by volume...big time! Once the beer finished fermenting and was kegged, my buddy Brian and I decided to do some preliminary tests. Through experimentation (drinking), we confirmed that, while light in body and easy to drink, this beer was POTENT.

Thus was born the beer called Tyson's Punch Out, a tribute to the Dad-to-be (Tyson), and a marginally clever play on the title of the classic Nintendo boxing game from 1987.

Tyson's Punch Out

American Cream Ale

5 gallons

6 lbs. Alexander's Pale LME (probably more like 8 lbs.)

1 lb. Dry Rice Extract

1/2 lb. Cane Sugar

1/2 oz. Columbus hops (14.2% AA) boiled for 40 minutes

1 oz. Saaz hops (3.5% AA) boiled for 1 minute.

Fermented with 1 packet of Nottingham Dry Yeast

OG: 1.070

FG: 1.010

SRM: 5 (yellow)

ABV: ~8%