Brew the White River
White Cream Ale — home brew kit
Cream Ale · 5.3% · 5 gallons
from $29In stock · Ships in 2-3 days
A five-gallon all-grain cream ale kit named for the White River: grain, hops, yeast and the recipe, milled and measured.
Brewed and boxed by Derek Leavitt
In the glass
Light, clean and faintly sweet corn. The one you hand somebody who says they don't like beer.
Serve 38°F, as cold as you can get it
Alongside A hot Ozark afternoon and a cooler on the boat.
Big, generous Ozark tailwater that rises and falls with the dam and grows brown trout to legend size.
The box arrives with the grain already milled and weighed, the hops in marked packets for each addition, and the yeast kept cold. You supply the pot, the water and the time. Nothing in here is a concentrate.
Full instructions come in the box and are written for somebody on their second batch, not their twentieth — every step says why it is there, so you can tell which ones you can bend.
- All grain, milled and weighed to the batch
- Cream Ale · 5.3% ABV · 18 IBU
- Hops bagged per addition, so nothing goes in at the wrong minute
- Instructions written for a second-time brewer
The numbers
5.3%Alcohol by volume
(1.050 − 1.010) × 131.25
18Bitterness, IBU
Bitterness only means anything against the style. This one is a Cream Ale.
3.5Colour, SRM
The swatch above is this number on the standard reference ramp, not an impression of it.
Gravity1.050 down to 1.010 — 80% apparent attenuation.
The day, and the wait
Forgiving all the way through, and the flaked maize needs no extra step.
- First pint
- about four weeks31 days from brew day, including conditioning
- Batch size
- 5 US gallonsAbout fifty twelve-ounce bottles
- You supply
- Pot, fermenter, thermometer, hydrometer, bottlesThe starter kit below is exactly this list, if you have none of it.
- Mash in60 min at 150°FHold the temperature. This rest is where the body of the beer is decided.
- Sparge and run off45 minSlowly. Rushing it pulls tannins out of the husks.
- Boil60 min2 hop additions, each timed from the END of the boil.
- Chill and pitch30 minDown to 62°F before the yeast goes anywhere near it.
- Clean up45 minThe part nobody photographs, and the part that decides the next batch.
Brew day4 h, kettle on to kitchen clean. The rest of the wait is the yeast doing its own work.
What arrives, and what you supply
In the box
- Milled grain, weighed for a 5-gallon batch
- Hops in marked packets, one per addition
- Yeast — SafAle US-05, American ale
- Priming sugar for bottling
- Printed recipe and brew-day instructions
Worth knowing
- You will need: a brew pot, a fermenter with an airlock, a thermometer, a hydrometer and bottles or a keg.
- Ferment at 62-64°F for ten days — temperature control matters more than almost anything else in this box.
- A hot Ozark afternoon and a cooler on the boat.
The recipe, in full
Printed on a card in the box as well. Nothing here is a concentrate and nothing is a trade secret.
Grain bill
- Pale 2-row
- 8 lb
- Flaked maize
- 1.5 lb
- Carapils
- 6 oz
Hop schedule
- Cluster
- 0.75 oz at 60 min
- Liberty
- 0.5 oz at 15 min
Fermentation
- Yeast
- SafAle US-05, American ale
- Schedule
- 62-64°F for ten days, then a week cold
- Batch
- 5 US gallons
Named for the White River
Ozarks, North Arkansas · AR
The water it is named for
- Water type
- Tailwater
While the wort cools
- Brewing starter kit$139
Six-gallon fermenter, airlock, auto-siphon, hydrometer, thermometer, bottling wand and a capper. Everything the recipe assumes you already own.
- White airbrushed hat
The same water, hand airbrushed onto a trucker cap.
Where this came from
river beer · made
0 — nothing entered the score yet, at the Derby's published weights, since . Views are not counted.
- white-river
- home-brew
- cream-ale
- ar