Creating the railroad empire across the west took considerable fortitude, commitment, and a strong back. Empire Builder Cream Ale is a nod to that incredible effort.
Creating the railroad empire across the west took considerable fortitude, commitment, and a strong back. Empire Builder Cream Ale is a nod to that incredible effort. This recipe boasts an original gravity of 1.074, certainly not for the weak of heart, and the sturdy malt backbone provides the basis on which this strength is founded.
Speaking of commitment, Americans have brewed the Cream Ale style for a century or more, growing and adapting it right along with our railways. This scaled up version of the classic boasts clean malt flavors, a firm bitterness, and features traditional adjuncts to achieve its medium body. Pouring with a deep golden hue and capped with a dense brilliantly white foam cloud, Empire Builder Cream Ale forges west into the sunset, never looking back.
This turned out fine. Took about 4 weeks to carbonate. Tastes as advertised. Pretty good abv.
C
C.
Strong Ale
A very smooth cream ale, white creamy head, and a long finish, but be careful its strong.
R
R.H.
Simple kit with great power
Bought this and added adjunct grains,8oz each, of 20 L crystal and Munich. Also used el dorado hops at 7 minutes left and dry hopped in the secondary fermenter. It’s a great foundation to build up with what you like.
Tastes very good, and packs a helluva punch at over 8% abv. The corn sugar bag for bottling time had a small hole/tear somewhere, like that when I opened the box. But other than that I think this is a great deal for the price.
j
j.
Empire Builder Imperial Cream Ale Beer
I love this beer not too sweet and plenty of power-just right for a night of tv.
J
J.
Crowd pleaser at my house
This is one of two home brews I poured over Christmas. I was a little surprised at how popular it was. My guests seemed to love it. Only one can of beer was opened—everybody wanted to keep drinking this cream ale (and the other home brew). I used Irish moss and gelatin fining for clarity and kegged it. The color was rich, very clear, and a great creamy head on each pitcher. Not as much of a head in the glass poured from the pitcher. Great body to this beer. Very nice flavor—very true to commercial cream ales. My only issue was it lacked much character from the hops. While it made the beer friendlier for casual beer drinkers, I would have liked a bit more of an edge to it.
Click here for recipe kit instructions