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.