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.

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.