Kentucky Common Beer is a once-popular style of ale

Ale

Ale is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a warm fermentation with a strain of brewers' yeast. The yeast will ferment the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste...

 from the area in and around Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, that is rarely brewed commercially today. Cheaper than imported beers, it was popular among the working class.

It was usually made with barley and approximately 25 to 30 percent maize

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

, with some artificial coloring, caramel

Caramel

Caramel is a beige to dark-brown confection made by heating any of a variety of sugars. It is used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons, and as a topping for ice cream, custard and coffee....

, or roasted malt to give it a dark color. It had an original gravity of 1.040-1.050, an average bitterness of 27 IBUs, and 2 percent soured malt. The soured malt was made in a sour mash

Sour mash

Sour mash is a process in the distilling industry that uses material from an older batch of mash to start fermentation in the batch currently being made, analogous to the making of sourdough bread. The term sour mash can also be used as the name of the type of mash used in that process, and a...

 with the help of Lactobacillus delbrueckii

Lactobacillus

Lactobacillus is a genus of Gram-positive facultative anaerobic or microaerophilic rod-shaped bacteria. They are a major part of the lactic acid bacteria group, named as such because most of its members convert lactose and other sugars to lactic acid. They are common and usually benign...

.

The New Albanian Brewing Company

New Albanian Brewing Company

The New Albanian Brewing Company, located in New Albany, Indiana, is a microbrewery. It was once rated sixth in the world according to Ratebeer.com. There are two locations in New Albany. The first location houses the company's original brewery, a pizzeria, and a public house. The second location...

 in New Albany, Indiana

New Albany, Indiana

New Albany is a city in Floyd County, Indiana, United States, situated along the Ohio River opposite Louisville, Kentucky. In 1900, 20,628 people lived in New Albany; in 1910, 20,629; in 1920, 22,992; and in 1940, 25,414. The population was 36,372 at the 2010 census. The city is the county seat of...

, features its version, Phoenix Kentucky Komon, as a rotating seasonal selection.