Batch 6 - Exploding honey heather scottish ale

What better way to celebrate the USA than making a batch of Scottish Ale.

I brewed this up on July 4th and its been festering in my basement for the last three weeks. I had a heather ale and a peated ale in Scotland - both were really good beers. I decided to combine the heather and peat in this experimental brew. Here is the recipe I used -

Before I forget - the Porter (Batch 5) was incredible. It is the only beer I have brewed thus far that I would brew again and not change a thing. Better than Black Butte Porter - which is saying alot.

OK - for the mash - I used my same cooler mash tun system. In the meantime I brought 6.5 gallons of water to boil and added 2 tsp gypsum salt - then let it cool to 170.

Grain Bill

10 lb Marris Otter
1.5 lb Kilnamber malt
.6 lb peated malt

I mashed for 1 hr - stirring every 15 min - the water was 170 when I started the mash - which settled out to 162 after mixing it with the grain. That was a little hotter than I was hoping so I left the lid of the cooler cracked to try and cool things down.

After an hour I drained the wort into my boil pot and started to sparge. After I got 6.5 gallons - I started the boil. After the hot break - I added 1 tsp Irish Moss, .9 oz fuggles hops and .2 oz of tetnanger hops.

After 50 minutes, I added 1 oz of dried heather tips. After 55 minutes I added .5 oz tetnager hops and 1 gram of sweet gale. Finally after 60 minutes, I shut down the boil and added another oz of dried heather tips and 1 lb of honey.

Cooled to 75 degrees and took a gravity reading (1.060).

After 21 days in the basement - I think today is going to be bottling day. Stay tuned.

Batch #5 - Arctic Blast Porter

A big snowstorm was headed to Portland (or as the local news dubbed it, an "Arctic Blast"), so I decided to brew up a nice dark porter. This is my second all-grain batch and first porter.

First, I boiled 6.5 gallons of tap water and let it cool. The guy at the brew shop told me that Portland has very soft water - so I added 2 tsp of Gypsum salt to the water. Also heated up 3.5 gallons of sparge water.

Grain Bill

9 lbs American 2 Row
.5 lbs Caramel 80
.5 lbs Domestic Chocolate Malt 350L
1 lb Domestic Munich Malt 10L
.25 lb British Black Malt 500L

Once my water had cooled to 170, I mixed it into my cooler/mash tun with the grain. I gave it a stir every 15 minutes or so and it maintained 154 degrees for an hour.

Next I drained the wort into the boil pot and started sparging. I did the sparge a little different this time, trying to "sprinkle" the water onto the grains rather than pour it in. Once I had 6 gallons of wort - I started heating it up. After boil and hotbreak, I started adding hops -

Hop Schedule

.5 oz Amarillo 60 min
.25 oz Tettnanger
1/2 tsp Irish Moss

.5 oz Tettnanger 40 min

.5 oz Fuggles 10 min

.5 oz Fuggles knockout

After the boil - I chilled to 70 and poured into the fermenter. The gravity was 1.040 at 70 degrees. Not as I high as I had hoped, but not terrible.

I pitched the yeast (WY1028XL). And let it sit for the next 25 days.

After 14 days, the gravity was 1.022.

At bottling, the gravity had dropped to 1.010.

For bottling, I primed with 2.75 oz of a mixture of cane and corn sugar. The beer tasted amazing at bottling - by far the best one I've made. I can't wait to taste the finished product.

Yeild was 25 22oz bottles, 2 17 oz bottles and 1 12 oz bottle. According to the recipator - ABV is only about 4%. Next time I will try to get my mash tun efficiency up, which will bring up my original gravity and ABV.

Batch #4 - dryhopped and bottled

Last night I bottled the all grain ale. It smelled amazing and was by far the best tasting batch prior to bottling. The final gravity was 1.009.

I didn't update previously - but it was in the primary fermenter for 10 days. Then I transferred to a secondary fermenter and dry hopped with 1.5 oz of cascade hops. Gravity at transfer was about 1.014.

It stayed in the secondary for another 10 days before bottling. I added 1/2 cup of corn sugar at bottling. Yield was 21 22oz bottles and 6 12oz bottles.

Batch #4 - Ale - all-grain

With my new mash/lauter tun in hand, I'm ready to try an all-grain batch. I wasn't planning to buy ingredients when I went to the store, but after learning how easy it would be, I decided to pick up some grain. I really had no idea what I was going to brew and had no recipe. I knew that I needed roughly 2 lbs of grain for every gallon of beer. With that in mind, I sifted through 50 varieties of grain. In the end, here is my grain bill -

4.5 lbs Marris Otter malt
4.5 lbs Gambrinus pale malt
1 lb Extra Special British malt
1 lb Medium Crystal malt (40L)

I got an extra pound because I figured that my extraction rate (i.e., my efficiency in extracting fermentable sugar from the grain when mashing) would be low. You can compensate for low extraction rates by using more grain.

My grain selections were on the pale side (I think), so I decided to go with a pale ale again. I picked up 2oz of Chinook hops, 2oz of Cascade hops, 4 oz of Amarillo hops and liquid yeast (California ale). I also used 10 gallons of bottled spring water.

THE MASH

First step, heat up 6 gallons of water to 160. Then I poured the water into the mash tun and added the 11 lbs of crushed grain. I debated whether to mix the water into the grain or the grain into the water, for unknown reasons, I went with the latter option. I was trying to hit a temperature of 152.

After stirring a few times, the temperature stabilized at 152. I then let it sit for 60 minutes, stirring and monitoring the temp every 15 minutes. I only lost about 1 degree over the hour.

In the meantime, I was heating up the sparge water to 170 (about 3 gallons).

After the 60 minutes, I recirculated a few times and then drained into the brewpot. Then I started pouring in the sparge water at the back end of the cooler. I let that sit for 15 minutes, then drained. Not sure if I did this correctly. My sparge drained real fast (less than 5 min). Afterwards, I read that sparging could take up to an hour. Oh well, I drained until I hit 6.5 gallons in the brewpot.

Next I took a gravity reading - 1.032 at 142 degrees. I haven't done the math yet - but I think that was pretty low. Definitely lower than I wanted.

Next I boiled the wort until it hit the hotbreak (i.e., after the foam subsides). Here is my hopping schedule:

60 min 1.5 oz Chinook (12.6 aau)
30 min .5 oz Chinook
5 min 1 oz Amarillo
knockout 1 oz Amarillo

Also added 1/2 tsp Irish Moss with the first hops.

After the boil - I cooled it to 80 (it took about 20 min). The spec grav was 1.040. How did it get lower? Also, I only got about 4.5 gallons into the fermenter - then, in a panic, I topped off with 1/2 gallon of unsterilized tap water from an unsterilized pitcher. Probably not a good idea.

Mash/Lauter Tun

I finally got around to brewing another batch. Basically, I've been trying to figure out the best way to switch to all grain. I decided on converting a cooler into a mash/lauter tun. I went to the brew shop hoping to get some advice and find some parts.

The basic concept of the mash/lauter tun is to "mash" the grains in hot water for an hour. After mashing the grain in the mash tun, you drain (or lauter) the wort into the brewpot. Commercial breweries do this with a separate mash tun and lauter tun. With a modified cooler, you can do both.

I was prepared to spend about $50 on a cooler and $50 on the modifications. Luckily, the guy at the brewshop showed me an easy way to do the modification for $1.50.

I bought a 58 gallon Coleman rectangular cooler. Then put 3/8" tubing through the drain with a stopcock on the outside - then another length of tubing long enough to get to your kettle. On the inside you take a copper or stainless scouring pad and wrap it around the end of the tube - affixed with a rubberband. This is basically going to keep the grain out of the tube and allow only the wort to drain.

It took about 15 minutes to get the cooler set up. Surprisingly it passed the leak test without a drop. I will probably upgrade this after another batch or two - but for $1.50 - its a cheap way to get started in all grain.

Batch #3 - IPA - update

Its been awhile since the second IPA went into the bottles. Basically, I left it in the primary for a week. Then transferred to the secondary for 2 weeks and dryhopped with 2oz of amarillo. It came out at a final gravity of 1.020 Not quite as low as I wanted - probably should have stayed in the fermenter a bit longer. I bottled with 1/2 cup of sugar.

After a few weeks, I tasted. Its better than Batch #1 - but still has the off flavors.

Of the first three, Batch #2 - the wheat beer - was by far the best.

Next step......all grain.

Batch #3 - Second Try IPA

For my third batch, I'm going to try another India Pale Ale. I'm using the same recipe I did the first time with a few modifications.

Here is the recipe

6.6 lbs Unhopped Light Malt Syrup (Coopers brand)
1 lb Light Dry Malt Powder
1 lb 20L Crystal Malt
1/2 lb 40L Crystal Malt
1/2 lb Dextrin Malt
1/2 lb Victory Malt
4 oz Cascade Hops (6%)
2 oz Centennial Hops (9.5%)
1/2 tsp Irish Moss

Steeping the whole grain

After sanitizing everything I brought 2.5 gallons of tap water to 150 degrees, then I started steeping the cracked grains in a grain bag. After 30 minutes, I removed the bag, added 2.5 gallons of tap water and brought the water up to a rolling boil.

Boiling the wort

Once boiling, I turned off the heat, added one cup of extract syrup, and turned the heat back on. Next I added 2oz of cascade hops to the water. These hops will add bitterness to the beer.

After 15 minutes, I added 1/2 tsp of irish moss to the boil.

After boiling for 30 minutes, I added another 2oz of cascade hops to the boil.

After boiling for 50 minutes, I added 1oz of centennial hops to the boil and put the wort chiller in the kettle.

After 60 minutes, I turned off the heat. Then the last ounce of centennial hops get tossed in the kettle, along with the remaining extract syrup and powder. After waiting ten minutes for the late additions to pasteurize, I turned on the chiller.

The chiller took about 20 minutes to get the wort down to 80 degrees. I then poured the wort back and forth between the fermenter and the boiling pot in order to aerate. Finally, I pitched the yeast.

I almost forgot to take a hydrometer reading and when I did I don't think it was accurate - nevertheless, it came in at a whopping 1.080.

Into the closet for a week.