Happy Days

Happy Days is a strong, heavily dry hopped imperial red ale brewed by Claremont Craft Ales in Claremont, California, and built on the brewery's double IPA grain bill with caramel and roasted malt added for color.

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Specs

Brewery Description

We built the grist based on our double IPA grain bill, then added some caramel malt and roasted malt to get our color.

Source: Craft Beer & Brewing: head brewer on Happy Days

The quote above is from head brewer Brian Seffer writing in Craft Beer & Brewing. The brewery beer catalog also provides its own description.

Tasting Notes

HAPPY DAYS is strong and bold, bursting with rich malty notes and deep piney aromas. Perhaps a tad intimidating, but truly satisfying.

Source: harp-clownfish.squarespace.com

Ingredients

Head brewer Brian Seffer published a 5 gallon homebrew version of the beer: 16 lb pale two-row, 1 lb crystal 150L and 2 oz chocolate malt, CTZ at first wort, 1 lb dextrose and 6 oz Mosaic at flameout, then 4 oz each of Mosaic and Simcoe as a three day dry hop, fermented with WLP001 at 68°F, OG 1.095 and FG 1.020 (Craft Beer & Brewing recipe). These are homebrew scale figures, not the brewery's production recipe.

Hop Profile

Brewing Details

Style Context

As category context only, the closest entry in the Brewers Association guideline is Imperial Red Ale: deep amber to reddish brown, medium to high caramel malt, high hop aroma and flavor, very high bitterness and a prominent alcohol character, at 8.0 to 10.6 percent ABV and 55 to 85 IBU. The beer's published 9.5% ABV fits that range; GABF's Strong Red Ale category name differs from the guideline entry read, and its exact parameters were not confirmed.

Awards History

Generated from the loaded results for this brewery and beer name, not researched separately; years not loaded are not covered.

Brewery Context

Claremont Craft Ales is in Claremont, CA. Brewery type in Open Brewery DB: Microbrewery.

Links checked 2026-10-14: Website.

Related

• Brewery: Claremont Craft Ales
• Hop varieties: Columbus/Tomahawk/Zeus, Mosaic, Simcoe
• Hop farms that grow these varieties: grown by Coleman Agriculture, grown by Perrault Farms

Each farm listed as growing a variety grows that variety according to the hop farm data; the brewery has not said it bought hops from that farm.

Links

• Claremont beer catalog
• Claremont Craft Ales
• Craft Beer & Brewing: Happy Days recipe
• Craft Beer & Brewing: head brewer on Happy Days
• BeerMenus: Happy Days Imperial Red
• Brewers Association: beer style guidelines

Gaps

• Not Found: IBU. Checked beerandbrewing.com, harp-clownfish.squarespace.com, beerandbrewing.com, beermenus.com, claremontcraftales.com, web searches recorded in the research notes, Catalog.beer search by beer and brewery name.
• Not Found: Color (SRM), Original gravity, Final gravity, Hop form, Hop use, Hop lot or farm, Water. Checked beerandbrewing.com, harp-clownfish.squarespace.com, beerandbrewing.com, beermenus.com, claremontcraftales.com, web searches recorded in the research notes.

Research Notes

• Field pass 2026-10-13: Brewery beer catalog names Happy Days and serves as beer url because no dedicated page was verified. Commercial IBU remains unpublished; homebrew calculations were excluded.
• The brewery home page returned no readable content and a guessed beer list path returned 404, so no beer page on the brewery site was found.
• ABV conflict: the head brewer's article says 9.5%, BeerMenus says 10.0%, the homebrew recipe targets 9.8%; the brewer's figure is used.
• Hops, malt amounts and dextrose come from the homebrew scale recipe, not from a commercial spec sheet.
• Press found covers earlier GABF golds for this beer (2018 and 2020); no 2026 medal announcement from the brewery was found.
• Researched 2026-10-13.
• Deep dive pass 2026-10-14: the brewery beer list gives tasting words; the brewer's account in Craft Beer and Brewing gives the grist.