Wee Scott

Scottish ales have always been one of my favorite beers but with Summer coming up I don't really want a big alcoholic beer to drink so I am making a lower alcohol Scottish ale. Fortunately the fiance supports my brewing habit and gives me little gifts to help from time to time. This time I got a Barley Crusher grain mill and a bunch of pale malt from Northern Brewer since we were in the Milwaukee area. It turns out that a 5 gallon bucket with gamma seal lid will fit almost exactly 25 lb of grain so two buckets per bag is perfect.

Recipe:

• 5 lb Maris Otter
• 1 lb UK Pale Malt
• 8 oz Crystal 30L
• 4 oz Crystal 120L
• 4 oz Aromatic Malt
• 4 oz Special Roast
• 3 oz English Chocolate Malt
• 2 oz Peat Smoked Malt
• 1 oz Willamette FWH
• 1 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min
• 0.5 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Fermax) @ 15 min
• 10 drops FermcapS before boil
• 500 ml mixed starter
• WLP028 Edinburgh Ale
• WLP041 Pacific Ale

• OG: 1038 (Beersmith)
• 23.2 IBU
• 15 SRM

Preheating the mash tun at 179ish this time since my goal mash temperature is a bit higher at 156. Grains are headed into the mash tun at 168 degrees for a 45 minute mash at 156 (nailed the temp). Mash dropped to 154 over 45 minutes. Another toy I picked up recently was a refractometer, which is getting run through its paces today.

First runnings, collected 2.75 gallons of 16.2% Brix (1064) wort. Added water and stirred like a mad man for about 5 minutes. This seemed to bump my OG a lot last time when I let the fiance stir so I am trying it myself. Second runnings, 6.4% (1024) and 5 gallons total. Third runnings, 4.0% (1015) and up to just shy of 7 gallons. Pre-boil is 9.4% Brix (1036) and just under 7 gallons of wort. Beersmith says 1033 and 6.5 gallons so the new mixing step really seems to help.

FWH were added before draining the first runnings and FermcapS was added before putting it on the heat. 60 minute boil started without issues. Taking a few minutes to transfer the Northern Brewer Dundalk Irish Heavy kit that I brewed about 3 weeks ago into a keg for a couple weeks of secondary fermentation before putting it in the kegerator.

Uneventful boil and chilled to 72 degrees with the help of the fiance before pouring into fermenter and pitching yeast. 

The yeast for this is a combination of two yeasts that I tried at White Labs when we toured. They had a Wee Heavy brewed with a bunch of yeasts and the Pacific Ale had a nice taste profile. I also really like the Edinburgh ale so I just did both in a starter and saved some of the mixture for later use. 

OG 10.9% Brix (1042)

Rye-rish Red

We are fortunate enough to have a great semi-local brewpub in Indianapolis that does homebrew competitions from time to time. The competition that they recently announced is the "Rye Not" homebrew challenge. Basically you have to use at least 25% Rye malt in any beer style that you want. I decided to make an Irish red for this competition and based on the fact that I have to add rye malt and that I am clever as hell I am calling it Rye-rish Red. 

• 5 lb Marris Otter (40.4%)
• 3 lb Rye (24.3%)
• 2 lb Pale 2-Row(UK) (I had this laying around so I used it) (16.2%)
• 1 lb Munich (8.1%)
• 13 oz Caramel 30L (6.5%)
• 5 oz Roasted Barley (2.5%)
• 4 oz Caramel 120L (2.0%)
• 1 oz US Goldings FWH
• 0.5 oz US Goldings @ 5 min
• 1 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min
• 1 tsp Fermax Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min
• 10 drops FermcapS before boil
• 1200 ml second generation Wyeast 1450 Dennys Fav starter

We have finally made it to spring and today was an awesome 70 degree day to do some brewing with the garage door open.

My mash tun likes to steal a good bit of heat from my strike water so I preheat it with 175 degree water and wait for it to fall to where I want it to be before adding grain. In this case that is 165 with a mash temp of 152 for one hour then batch sparge with two steps to get my pre-boil volume. The weather is so nice today that the fiance even made an appearance. Drained the tun onto the FWH and then batch sparged with about 5 gallons of 170 degree water and ended up with 6.5 gallons of wort.

One hour boil was uneventful and chilling went fine down to 71 degrees. The yeast was pitched and the fermenter went into the brew closet.

Efficiency went up on this batch, not sure if it was the sparge stirring help from the fiance or a different crush. Normally I am sitting around 60% but this time I hit 71% so the beer will be stronger than I intended since the OG came in at 1061. It would have been better to mash a bit hotter to bring the final gravity up but it may have ended up too sweet if I had done that. Anyway we will see in a couple of weeks how it tastes, the first sample had some rye spiciness so that is good.