Scottish Ale

Man, it was cold down here in the Southland over the weekend. How to warm up the house? I know! Boil some Scottish Ale!







That was quite a bit of work, so I treated myself to steaks. Great grilling weather. 23 degrees. I could set my homebrew down and it did not get warm!



Happy to report that the air lock is bubbling away this morning. This Brewer's Best (LD Carlson) kit, if it lives up to the great reviews, is one of the best values on the market. For $29.50, you get the usual grains, LME, DME, grain bag, hops, AND the priming sugar, yeast and even bottle caps. A lot of kits make you buy those last bits extra. We'll see. I do like that two of these kits exceed the $50 requirement at my supplier for free shipping.

I also have a more pricey Northern Brewer Scottish Ale kit for later. It will be nice to compare and contrast.

Wait, 23 F is cold??? The temperature here is about 0 F today with a windchill of about minus 10 F... Now THAT is chilly...

BernardSmith said:

Wait, 23 F is cold??? The temperature here is about 0 F today with a windchill of about minus 10 F... Now THAT is chilly...

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Yep, I did my time for the first half of life in northern Illinois. Never going to live up North again. I'll let ya'll boast about how great it is to be miserable.

It is cold for the South. 23 with wind chill of 17 is cold here. Wednesday night, it is supposed to fall to 5. That is extreme. Normal temps this time of year are high 40s-low 50s with lows of 30-35.

Many times in the past I have traveled to the frozen tundra of the Midwest, only to return to shirtsleeve weather here. But this is our week of winter here for this year. By late next week, we'll be back in the low 50s. The first weekend in March, I am to travel to Illinois for my niece's wedding reception (she's getting hitched in Cancun). So it will be another shocker to go up there, I'm sure.

Jim, if you like irish stout, you may enjoy this beer. You can get it in Alabama grocery stores (publix) and it is way good to me.

I am gonna try making some someday.

Yeah, Good People is a good company. I like their IPAs. I'm not much on stouts. My eventual goal is to clone Innis & Gunn Original. If you ever get a chance to try I & G Cherrywood Aged, be sure you do! If I can clone I&G (which many have tried but not succeeded at), I'll be happy. But I am just starting out. Easy is what I am after right now.

I boosted my Scottish Ale with an extra half-pound of Munton's Dark DME and made a 20-liter batch. We'll see what happens.

Can you describe scottish ale.

My understanding - and I am not an expert on BCJP styles is that Scottish beers tend to be sweet and malty and thin on the hops and not very alcoholic (from about 2.5 to about 5 % ABV) - the mashing temperatures tend to be higher and so the sugars are less fermentable - hence the sweetness

Yep - more malt, less bitterness and hops. I don't know about "thin on the hops," they use about the same amount of hops, but different varieties. My favorite beers. A good 90 shilling is a work of art. This one I am doing is an 80 shilling. Find yourself a six-pack of Innis & Gun Original or Whiskey Aged and you'll probably get hooked like me. I am not a hop-head. I do like bitter beers but within reason.

Here's a review: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOWdvnd3S8g[/ame]

Like that guy, I am not a beer (or wine) connoisseur, I just know what I like.

So I sprinkled yeast Sunday at about 3 p.m. and left yesterday for a later work start at 11 a.m. with a vigorous ferment. Came home last night, and it had finished. No action in my 3-piece air lock and the cap is all the way down. Beer is so different than wine!

So tonight I will transfer to a carboy. Pondering adding a touch of brown sugar to ferment just a bit so I get a layer of CO2 in the headspace. Then we'll let it clear.

damnit, now I want to make that.

I wanted to grill some steaks this weekend, but I did not have the energy to shovel my way to my grill, unbury the grill and have my beer freeze in sub zero weather.

But 2 things I take away from your photos.

1-I now want to move my next boil up even sooner
2-we have the same brick facade in our kitchen. Mine is just older and looks like poo!

Elmer said:

I wanted to grill some steaks this weekend, but I did not have the energy to shovel my way to my grill, unbury the grill and have my beer freeze in sub zero weather.

But 2 things I take away from your photos.

1-I now want to move my next boil up even sooner
2-we have the same brick facade in our kitchen. Mine is just older and looks like poo!

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Mine is from the mid-1960s and it is on wifie's list of stuff to get rid of. LOL.

I could not believe how fast this beer fermented. Guess I'll roll with it.

jswordy said:

I am not a beer (or wine) connoisseur, I just know what I like.

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That, my friend, is a quote to live by.

Not off topic I hope... but I never know how folk know when their beer has fully fermented out.. Typically you can expect the hydrometer to read north of about 1.010 but it could be 1.013 or 1.015 or thereabouts..and where it ends up has as much to do with your mashing temperature and that has a great deal to do with a whole host of variables - like ambient temperature, the accuracy of the thermometer, the insulation of your mash tun, the technique you use to reach and maintain mash temp and the volume of solids to liquid in the mash...In other words, I don't believe any recipe that tells me what the finished gravity will be or believe most folk who claim that they hit that number.

The only way I can know that it has finished fermenting is to wait a few weeks and check the gravity a couple or more times within a period of a few days...

Hitting a precise final gravity is part of the true challenge of brewing. The goal is not to brew great beer once, but to brew great beer every time. Easier said than done.

There are a lot of variables, as you mentioned, but eliminating them is easy, but takes time.

-Know your processes. If you change the way you do things every time you brew, you'll never yield consistent results. Using the same water/grain ratio will lead to consistent results.
-Know your equipment. If used the same way every time, your equipment will yield the same results every time. If your mash tun loses three degrees in an hour on a 50 degree day today, it'll lose that same three degrees on a 50 degree day six months from now. Also, crushing your grain on different mills will yield different results.
-Know your ingredients. If your recipe uses barley that's 38 pppg, and the barley you have on hand is 39pppg, it will change your starting gravity, as well as your final. Like the variance in grapes, different lots of the same barley may have different attributes. Knowing these is more than helpful.
-Know your environment. If you're not precisely controlling fermentation temperature, or mashing outdoors in different weather each time, you'll not yield consistent results.

Having said all that, just because beer can be made in a week, doesn't mean it should be. Waiting a few weeks after pitching is never a bad plan. Giving the yeasties time to ferment, clean up after themselves, and settle out, will give you cleaner, clearer beer.

Probably the one thing most people are guilty of in home brewing and winemaking is adjusting too many things at once. When we are trying to fix a problem, we should only change ONE part of the process at a time, else we'll never know what exactly caused the problem in the first place. That's something all of you winemakers that have much more experience than I do should be familiar with, patience.

Now, back to the Scottish Ale...I enjoy hops. Not nearly as much as some people, but I do like them. However, lately I've been Getting away from hoppy beers. A Scotch Ale is on my list of things to brew, but whether it's a 60/70/Wee Heavy will all depend on what time of year I get to it. Up next for me are an ESB, an Oatmeal Stout, and a Butternut Squash beer.

The pricing for the BB kits seems really good for partial mash kits with caps, sugar, and yeast all included.

Jswordy, how long do you expect the ale to stay in the bottle before it gets good?

My oatmeal stout was about 3 months.

I expect to bottle it and start drinking it after 3 weeks for carb. Not going to let it sit around, as I do not have a back stock of beer. I suppose it will get better as I go, but it will probably be gone in a month or so.

Supposedly, there's a Northern Brewer Scottish Ale kit on the way, and I'll start that one soon.

Also have crab apple wine, muscadine wine, two white wine kits, and elderberry wine to make yet. Need to get the freezer cleared out. So, busy times ahead.

I saw a four pack of Innis & Gunn Whiskey aged in Piggly Wiggly here. About 10 bucks, that would be between 13 and 14 bucks a six pack. Kind of pricey. If I want something like that, it would be a kit.

I like imperial stout and those kits are considerably more expensive than most kits. I bet a good Scottish Ale is up there also.

I looked and found a irish ale that had great reviews and it was only 31 bucks. It was an extract kit, gonna make that soon.

I have to admit I have never had a scottish Ale (commercially or otherwise).

I am an IPA, Stout, creame ale guy.

That being said I had planned to start my second batch in april and have my lawnmower ale (cream ale) ready for may. After tasting my first batch I moved up the boil date on my calender to mid march.
Now after reading this thread and realizing I need to up my production or suffer a dry spell, I have whipped my calender clean of any anticipated boil dates (SWMBO tries to keep me to adhere to my calender-"no drinking until you hit the 3 week mark on your calender").
but now I am just thinking of boiling this weekend!
and then I can buy a new kit!

olusteebus said:

I saw a four pack of Innis & Gunn Whiskey aged in Piggly Wiggly here. About 10 bucks, that would be between 13 and 14 bucks a six pack. Kind of pricey. If I want something like that, it would be a kit.

I like imperial stout and those kits are considerably more expensive than most kits. I bet a good Scottish Ale is up there also.

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That is amazing, I&G in the Piggly Wiggly!!! $10 is actually a good price. Why do you think I am trying to clone it? But as far as I have been able to tell, no one has accurately cloned I&G.

DO NOT BUY IT!!! If you DO buy the I&G Whiskey Aged, you will be hooked on it. Avoid it like heroin. It is life-altering.

If you want a safer Scottish Ale alternative, try Belhaven. It is also slightly cheaper. While good, it will not addict you like I&G does. And it's kind of cool to know you are drinking beer made with water from wells dug in the 16th century.

So... I racked the beer into a carboy Tuesday night and added one tablespoon of brown sugar. Got slow bubbles through Wednesday. Done last night but the cap is raised, so I know there is a nice layer of CO2 atop the brew. Wait a while and then rack and bottle.

My higher-dollar Northern Brewer Scottish ale kit, which is a third more expensive and has a different ingredients list, is due to arrive today. I probably won't start it until I get back from the frozen tundra up North in early March.