Scottish Ale Brew Day

While Mike was brewing up his Irish Red ale last Saturday night, I was brewing up a Scottish 70 Shilling ale.

Not sure of the political ramifications of these coinciding brew sessions (they both don’t like the Brits English, right?), but let’s relax and read a blog post.

Instead of Maris Otter, I selected Golden Promise malt for my base malt. I decided to go with a Scottish malt for a Scottish beer. In the photo above, you can see the flecks of black from the small amount of roasted barley.

Once the mash was done, I took the first gallon of running into a separate pot and boiled that on the stove top.

It was the first time I was brewing on the stove top in many years. Even with the extract brews that I have done in recent years, they have all been fired up outside. On a frigid February night, it was nice to have the warmth of the kitchen.

Meanwhile, out on the back porch:

Like the mist off of a Scottish Loch, the main boil was roaring away on the recently cleared, snow covered porch. Once both boils were done, I added the small boil’s content to the large pot and chilled them down to fermentation temperature.

Mike asked me if I boiled the first runnings down to a syrup like consistency. I wouldn’t say the end result of the boil was that thick but it was reduced down to 3/4th of it’s starting volume.

After I transferred the wort to the fermentor, I only had four gallons worth. Once I took a gravity reading and saw that it was way high, I added a gallon of filtered water to the fermentor, took a reading, and was happy with the scene: a full fermentor and a target starting gravity of 1.038.

After this brew is done, it’s on to the next brew. This Scottish ale is going to be my starter for the Braggot so I will be bottling and brewing on the same day.