Caramel Cream Ale recipe?

That might be a tricky batch to brew. Buy some Little Kings and some sundae sauce to start off with. Maybe keep the recipe dry, add crystal 80 until your beer turns red, and see what happens. I'm wondering what a cream ale would taste like with 8 IBUs.

 

It sounds like you're modelling this more after a Cream Soda than a Cream Ale. There's no similarity between the two. "Serious creaminess" and vanilla would definitely be out of place in what is generally thought of as a Cream Ale. I tend to use the BJCP's characterization to describe the style as "an ale version of the American lager style." I hate to sound like the Style police, but this strays a bit too far for my taste.

That said, what you're describing may well be a tasty brew, though I've never had Due South's beer. For caramel flavor, I'd add at least 5% crystal 60L - maybe as high as 10%. For creaminess, you could mash at a bit higher temp. That would also bump the sweetness a little. I've never pushed dextrine to its limits, so I'm not sure how much that will buy you. Unfortunately, for "serious creaminess", you're likely to need some lactose.

 

I don't know the beer or the HBT discussion.

You could try playing with oatmeal to see if you get your desired mouthfeel.

Last night I was drinking a helles doppelbock and thinking it was analogous to premium vanilla ice cream. It was richly malty, but I don't think it really had much in the way of specialty malts, and of course, hop character was low. Probably just a nice blend of pils, vienna, and munich -- perhaps it had a light touch of crystal. Although I usually shy away from adding extras to beer, I was thinking that a vanilla bean might be an interesting dessert element to this beer. Probably, I'm just buying into the power of suggestion; I would likely hate it.

 

The brewer didn't use this, but d-45 syrup makes candy caramel flavor and mild vanilla.

 

Lots of flaked oats, maybe?

 

I know the beer, it's a little too sweet for me and also uses a good amount of lactose. I agree with the oats suggestion if you don't want to go the lactose route. I would also keep the crystal on the low side, ~20L. A few vanilla beans in the fermenter would help, split and scraped of course. Although i've had due souths caramel cream ale a few times, I never thought about making it myself. So I haven't given too much thought into the grain bill.

 

Ive done what your looking for a long time ago (basically a beer modeled after a vanilla cream soda)

This is roughly what I did

0.5# LME - boil by itself until you take it down to less than 1/2 the original volume
9# Pils
0.5# 80L
0.75# 60L
0.5# maltodextrin

Hops to 15IBU
US05
vanilla to taste when kegging

The point to boiling down the LME is to get a high proportion of maillard/caramelization reactions to take place, which gives you a deep caramel/toffee flavor

I used lactose for a creaminess, you can use maltodextrin to get a thick mouthfeel, but unfortunately no creamy flavor

 

I could be wrong, but I'd guess it would take quite a bit of effort to keep that from burning. That's a helluva lot of sugar right out of the can, let alone at twice the concentration. Not saying it cant be done, only that it's likely a major PITA.

 

Not really, at the amount I suggest its really easy to do in a small pot on the stove, keep the heat relatively low and stir lots. Instead of targeting a volume reduction look for color development, you want a very very dark color, feel free to add small amounts of water to help you get there.

Alternatively you can also adjust the pH up (like I suggest when making candy sugar) into the 10ish range and you'll get rapid color development (maillard rx)

Notes

Appearance - Dark Brown, Substantial head that stays at least a finger thick for the whole pint, nice lacing

Aroma - Vanilla, caramel, toffee

Taste - Malty, sweet but not cloying, nice vanilla caramel finish, little heavy with the lactose, bit of hops in the finish

Mouthfeel - Medium-full body, medium carbonation

Drinkability - Very good beer, almost desert-like, easy to drink, while its sweet it doesnt become cloying, alcohol level is just about right

Notes/Thoughts - I went a bit heavy with the lactose in this beer (I used 1# of lactose), and while the body is perfect the lactose flavor is a bit strong to me (others dont notice it as much); Next time I plan on thining the body a bit and upping the carbonation, adding a bit more vanilla (2Tbsp maybe), and boiling down a bit more of first runnings/or extract to get more toffee/caramel flavors, overall a good beer and I plan on making it again


picture is a lot darker than it really is

 

Yah

Yes, and yes

I think less malto d would be better for the beer if u go that route, I'm actually rebrewing this soon myself, with a few tweaks, but I'm still gonna use lactose myself

 

I love beers like this. Smells and tastes like dessert!

 

I would hold the LME amount the same, but use the candy syrup method to dramatically darken the LME, for more caramel I would switch around the crystal malts a bit from the original, hence the reason I put in 60L instead of 40L

For vanilla I used homemade extract, but my extract usually takes about 2mos to make, and isnt the normal tincture that lots of homebrewers use. A good vanilla extract from Penzeys/etc would be an easy route to take. When I did mine I added about 2tbsp of vanilla to the batch

 

what are you going for? if you want a vanilla soda like beer, the trick is a high level of carbonation and a good amount of residual sweetness, thickness will come from the malto-d, add more and it'll be thicker, oats work as well, but Ived always had issues with head retention when using them (though I tend to toast)