Category: homebrewing

Rebrew Series #1 Scottish 60 part 2

stoutmaker2 Comments

So between what I reread, and what I remember, the 60 was a decent beer. What I don’t remember was if it was actually a 60 style or not. I mean while it was an approximation with the caramelizations,,, would it have passed the BJCP guidelines? From what I am seeing, I am thinking no. The burning of the wort taste would probably get it dinged right away.

I think we were close though. I think all this recipe needed was some caramel malt. Since it is such a small beer, I don’t think much will be needed to make a big difference. So to the 6lbs of Maris Otter lets add ½ lb of 60L and a ½ lb of 80L. And even that sounds like too much.

Next is body.  I think we were close on this,, but it might have been just luck, as it sounded like I was guessing. But I’m going to use the same 152 mash, but also just a nip of carapils. This should keep a slight dryness to it, but keep something of a nice feel. 

Now the yeast is probably the biggest change. The old Coopers yeast chews down enough, but is too clean. The Windsor, while it has those esters, always seems to finish too sweet, and seems to stay in suspension. 
I think I’m going to go with US04. This will definitely chew down, give up those esters, and flocc out real good. 
But there is one thing I’m wondering that this yeast will do. Can I make it throw diacetyl? Ferment low,, like 55 so it don’t really clean up. 

And thats really all I think we will need to so lets brew this.

Brew day;
Final grain bill for today:

  • 6lbs Marris Otter
  • .5 lb 60L crystal
  • .5lb 80L crystal
  • .25 lb carapils
  • 2oz roasted barley
  • .75 oz Fuggles @ 60
  • .25 Fuggles @ 30
  • US04 yeast 
  • Mash @152F

I was going to use the same mash tun, but I forgot it was in the garage, so I used the Mash and Boil. Total water was 7.35 gallons,, which I heated all at one time. Used the over night timer so it was ready when I went down at 5am

Took off 2 gallons of that water and kept it for sparging. So we mashed into 5.35 gallons. With only 7lbs of grain it felt pretty thin. But when there is that much crystal malt, it smells pretty good.

I wasn’t sure if that small of a grain bill would hold temp as well, but had no problems. Lost only about half a degree with no other heat bursts.

Nothing of note happed with the rest of the brew so got it in the fermenter and going to ferment at 58. Hoping we can get that yeast to dump at least a little diacetyl for us.

This is a pretty small beer, OG was 1.048. A bit higher than the original, but not bad. So we should be able to get this kegged up in a couple weeks. I cant wait.

(as I am posting this the US04 is chugging away at 58F)

Rebrew Series #1- Scottish 60 part 1

stoutmaker1 Comment

(Whoops. Didn’t hit publish. This should have went out last Friday… Oh well) 

The first blog posted rebrew that I am going to tackle in this series will be the Scottish 60. Or Laceration as I called them, (as you may or may not find out later).

It was one of those beers that I brewed without ever having a real commercial version of.
I brewed this beer,, or something like it as an extract kit a few times back in the 90’s, not sure of the brand really, but the version in the original post is all grain.

Not exactly sure when this brew actually happened though. The dates on these older posts are sometimes the right dates and and sometimes they are reposts of my original blog that is no longer around. But I would guess by the things I’m mentioning, it may be around 2000ish

Anyhow,, Its a Scottish 60 Shilling by the BJCP of that time,, today I guess it would be classified as a Scottish Light? And again, at this point in time, I don’t believe I have had any commercial versions of this style. Because back in those 90’s and 2000’s craft beer was pretty bleak around here, and I didn’t know any other homebrewers at all yet. So I just picked up extract kits, and thats what I expected it to taste like I guess.
So those kits musta been good enough that I wanted to brew a 10 gallon all grain batch.

Here is the Recipe as I brewed it back then:
10 gallons Laceration
12 lbs Maris Otter
.6 lbs roast barley
1.5oz East Kent @ 60
Windsor and Coopers yeast (was split batch)
Mash 152

What I remember thinking here was that I needed to get some caramel or maybe burnt sugar flavor in. So I took a bit of the first wort and boiled it down to syrup while the rest of the wort came up to boil.
Sounded like a decent plan, But not historically accurate.. I know this was a spur of the moment thing. But do not remember if I figured water amounts first or just went and did it.

I guess what I’m doing here is trying to get a beer that tasted like the first ones that I brewed, plus apply things that I know now to use more standard procedures for repeatability.
So, true Scottish lights/60’s don’t caramelize for flavor, its the grain bill. I think I should try to get some Crystal malts in there to get the authentic look, feel and taste.

The beer in the original post was also a yeast experiment. Split it into two 5 gallon ferments. One with Windsor yeast and one with the old stand at the time.. Cooper yeast.
It looks like I preferred the Coopers over the Windsor, more because of cleaner taste and body maybe. Windsor is pretty bad on settling out.

I want some of those brit style esters, but also something that will attenuate down and flocculate out a bit more. I have an idea here, but will save that for brewday.

Ok I think we have a plan for this rebrew of the Scottish 60. No big changes,, so we should be pretty close to that beer back then.

I’m gonna go run some numbers and get set up for this weekend brew. Then talk about any changes and the brew in part 2. Then review in part 3.

Rebrewing old recipes

stoutmaker1 Comment

I’ve had this blog now for over a decade now. Brewed and posted a lot of beers. But sadly in the few times that I have moved servers and locations, I’ve lost some of the first few years.

Since I’ve been brewing much much longer than when internet was easily accessed, I have some notes scribbled here and there in notebooks as well.

I think I’ll start doing some rebrews of my old beers. I’ll throw in one of those old old recipes now and then, but they are almost all the same stout over and over.

I didn’t really start branching out into different brews until around the 2000’s and that’s where a lot of my notes started going going on to floppies. I seen no reason to keep 5.25 disks.. so they got chucked.

The earliest posts I have that survived are from 2010 so there is more than enough brews to choose from.

So to start out with, I’ll give the Laceration a go. It’s a Scottish 60 that I brewed first back in the extract days and moved it up to all grain… Plus I believe this was my first 10 gallon batch. And did a split ferment with 2 different yeasts.

I’ll get it re written for a 5 gallon batch this weekend and will do a brew day report. I did a lot of spur of the moment things so an accurate rebrews may not be so easy. But check out the original post to see what I mean.

Stay Tuned