A Kentucky common pours amber-orange to brown, usually clear, with a short-lived white to beige head. It tastes clean and lightly malty, with grainy sweetness, a touch of caramel, toffee or biscuit and often a little corn, a low hop and a fairly dry finish. It is highly carbonated and never sour, at 4–5.5% alcohol.
Where it comes from
Brewers around Louisville, Kentucky, made it from some time after the Civil War until Prohibition, and almost nowhere else. It was cheap and quick: they racked it into barrels while it was still fermenting and bunged them tight, so it finished carbonating in the saloon cellar. Before it died out it made up about three quarters of the beer sold around Louisville. Some think German immigrant brewers created it as a dark cream ale, adding dark grain to suit the local water. The BJCP lists it among its historical beers.
Next to its neighbours
It tastes like a darker cream ale that leans on corn with a little character malt, and comes closest to an amber or dark adjunct lager or an Irish red ale.
Kentucky Common in numbers
- Original gravity
- 1.044–1.055
- Final gravity
- 1.010–1.018
- Classic examples
- Apocalypse Brew Works Ortel's 1912
- BJCP style
- 27A Historical Beer: Kentucky Common
Sources
Checked .
- 27A. Historical Beer: Kentucky Common, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
