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.