Tag: beer

Rebrew Series #1 Scottish 60 part 3

stoutmakerLeave a comment

So this is part 3 of the Scottish 60 rebrew and we are ready to be tasting. You can check out parts one and two right there on the links.
I kegged this about two weeks ago and I’m just doing the set and forget carb method, so no shaking or over pressurizing.

What I was trying to do was go back to these beers that I brewed when first starting out. Where they as good as I remember? And can I improve them a bit using what I have learned since then. And as far as I can gather, its been 20 years since last brewing this one.

I was trying to get a caramel backbone both then and now. Then I tried using a boil down of first runnings to try and caramelize the sugars, which was pretty much out of character for the historic brewing. So this go round I used the more traditional style of grain bill to get where I wanted. Crystal 60 and 80 were the focus here.

I did almost nothing out of the ordinary with this brew just a regular day on the Mash and Boil.

So how did it turn out?

Poured me a pint of this dark copper beer. Nice light tan head, that probably would have stayed a bit longer, but I just grabbed a glass from the cupboard. A beer clean glass would have helped. But the lacing was still pretty good.

Oh lord the caramel. Not overpowering, but definitely the main event here. Just the bit of what I would call chocolate or something close to that. And that US04 yeast is there but took a bit of warming to get.

The caramel follows into the taste as well. And,, as I was trying to get, a bit of Diacetyl. This is why I fermented at a lower than normal temp with the US04, to see if I could get some of that buttery in here. And it worked. Not strong, but it don’t need to be strong to be noticeable. Now maybe that chocolate note I was smelling was the diacetyl or butterscotch maybe.

No hop taste but the yeast esters are building the warmer it gets. Bitterness is very low, but countering the sweetness.

I gotta say that I really like this beer. And would also say while I remember really liking the first run, this is probably closer to what I was intending to brew back then. Its got all of those tastes I wanted, a bit dryer and probably much more to style.. Other than its slightly bigger than what a Scottish Light would be. This would most likely be in the Heavy range as we are close to a 5% beer.

I’m going to say that the improvements in this rebrew are a success and that this is a pretty good beer, I’m sure it wont stick around long.

That was fun going back and trying to rebrew some of the first beers. But stay tuned. I have another rebrew coming up this week. A newer brew than this one, but it fits in with one of our club activities.

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)

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