To inaugurate our newly bought 15 gallon, stainless steel mash/lauter tun (MLT) with ball-valve we brewed a Scotch Ale. This is a very simple Scotch Ale, maybe too simple. For the grains, I purchased 5kg of two-row pale malt and 1kg of a darker caramel malt. For the yeast, I bought a vial of Burton Ale Yeast (WLP023). And, I already had a 50g bag of Tettnanger hops in my freezer. All ingredients for this brew day were bought at La Chope A Barrock. Sadly, we lost the sheet our recipe was written on during the clean up,
so I will give you all the quick and simple version... minus the
details.
With all the ingredients in hand we began the day by cleaning and sanitizing the equipment. Once the sanitation was complete we began to heat our strike water. When the desired temperature of the strike water was attained we added the water to the grain. The grain was mashed in our new stainless steel MLT. The MLT has a false bottom that sits two inches above the bottom of the pot to keep the grain from clogging the outlet. To stir the mash we bought a really nice stainless steel paddle - what a work out. We did have one problem, and that was the pot's ability to retain the heat. I found an easy fix online, wrapping the pots in an insulating wrap - which can be bough at most hardware supply stores.
Boil, boil, boil for 60min and voila!.. Beer!
After the beer cooled we took the specific gravity reading, 1.062. Only
about two weeks later did I have time to check how the brews were doing,
and move on to the next step. SO, we had split the beer up into two
carboys, unequally divided, for the purpose of making two distinct
brews. The one that started with the greater volume remained untouched,
but the one containing the lesser volume got a nice dose of Black-strap
molasses. The molasses was cooked slightly, to allow it to dissolve, in 3
litres or so of water. I then let it cool and added it to the beer. The
beer that was left alone was transferred into a secondary carboy and
put into the cellar to lager. Meanwhile the molasses beer was allowed to
continue fermenting - I swirled the carboy to get the yeast into
suspension and back to work!
After
another week or so I tasted the molasses beer and took its gravity, it
measured 1.010 and tasted like molasses... definitely added too much
molasses. Though it started at 1.062 and went down to 1.010 I cannot
predict the total alcohol as I do not know what the addition of the
molasses added to the total fermentable sugar count. Suffice it to say that the beer is strong. To balance/mellow out the intense molasses flavour I threw in some coffee beans. I also cellared this one to lager.
One
month later I added a nice piece of cherry wood to the molasses scotch
ale and to the other one I added 50g of Citra hops. I left them alone
for ten days at room temperature then we bottled them. While bottling I
make sure to taste them, some quick notes: the molasses/coffee and
cherry wood beer still tasted like molasses... now too does the cherry
wood. For the dry hopped Citra Scotch ale, or as I like to call it HopScotch Ale, I could feel/taste the oily resins from the hops as well as their wonderful exotic fruit aromas/flavours. I
much prefer the hopped version to the molasses - maybe only due to my
overly liberal addition of molasses.
The beer has been bottled, now, for
the last three weeks. I will soon update the post with a review of the
beer. Thanks for reading! Now get out there and brew your own.
Cheers!
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