This is my Raspberry Honey California Common beer.

“California Common” means I’m using a Lager Yeast (the kind of yeast in those Stellas and Heinies - all those). When you brew a Lager it has to brew at a low temperature (like high 50Fs). That’s how they get super clear and have that crisp bite to them. But, you need a fermenting area where you can control the temp to that low - which I do not. When you use a Lager yeast at room temperature it’s call a “California Common.”

I used a California Common recipe as a base for this recipe, that I ended up amending enough to call it an original. I added 12oz of real raspberries (you can see the seeds at the bottom of the first picture and the top of the last, floating in with the yeast particulate) and 4oz of honey. That’s 16ox of added sugar. I wasn’t fucking thinking. Because without the raspberries and honey it’s a legit, alcoholic beer. With all that added sugar it’s going to have the alcoholic content of almost a wine. It’s going to be nuts.

These five pictures were taken over the course of 4 days. And, man, it was insane. I’ve never seen it like this. The Edelweiss and Winter Wheat I made were almost like this, but they were made with a wet yeast that sort of had a mini starter. This was all dry yeast with no starter. Totally insane.

Cool to see the changes, right?