2018 Scottish Export Ale

December 2018 – Eric wants to try his hand a beer making and we agreed upon a Scottish Ale. We had one at Jordan Brewing Company in Cary when we celebrated his birthday, and really enjoyed it.

Hopefully this one will turn out well. I cobbled a recipe together from several I looked at, and one of the guys at American Brewmaster helped me refine it.

Ingredients:

Malt 6# liquid light malt extract
2 lbs dry amber malt extract
1# dark brown sugar
8 oz maltodextrin
Steeping Grains 1# crystal malt 60L
1/2# chocolate malt -340L
Hops 1 oz Columbus (boiling)
1 oz Glacier (boiling)
1 oz Glacier (finishing)
Yeast Safale US 05
Priming 3/4 cup priming sugar

Method:

Put steeping grains in mesh bag. Heated 3 gallons water to 165 F and steeped the grains for 20 minutes. Let bag drain for 10 minutes. I found that shutting the heat off at 165 F, the wort dropped to 150 F in 17 minutes. Had to turn the heat back on for the last couple of minutes.

Brought wort to rolling boil. Shut off heat. Reserved 1 quart boiling wort. Added maltodextrin, dry malt, and liquid malt – stirring well after each addition. Used reserved wort to rinse the canisters the liquid malt came in.

Brought back to a boil, added, 1 oz Columbus hops. Boiled 40 minutes.

Added 1 oz Glacier hops. Boiled 15 minutes.

Added 1 oz Glacier hops. Boiled 5 minutes.

Transferred to primary fermenter. Diluted to 5.25 gallons with cold water. Used ice bath in sink to reduce temperature to 70 F.

Added yeast, sealed fermented, and place air lock.

10/15/2018
SG 1.069
Racked into carboy. 10/19/2018
SG 1.022
Bottled. 11/11/2018
SG ?

Notes:

Yield 51 bottles
Alcohol Will have to check the SG when I open the first bottle. Forgot to do it before adding priming sugar. Based upon the recipe, I’m expecting 7%
Brewing Notes Added all malt at the beginning of the boil and stirred it well. The last batch (chocolate-peanut butter porter) had me stir in half the dry malt at the end – it didn’t dissolve well. Not doing that again.
The instructions said the initial gravity would be 1.071 to 1.075, but I diluted a bit more, so my SG of 1.069 was good. I racked at 1.022 — the instructions say the final gravity will be 1.016 to 1.019, so that’s on target as well. I’ll let the carboy set for 1 to 2 weeks before bottling.
I’m really pleased with this yeast — the lees compacted tightly.
11/11/2018 Tasted a more bitter at bottling that I expected. Not bad, but more than I expected.
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