Sunday, July 4, 2010

Scottish Ale

Returning the homebrew world, I am starting with a beer kit. This one is Brewer's Best Scottish Ale

Got all the gear out and started heating up the water around 12:00 or so

12:26 Water at 150 F, I start to steep the grains
12:46 Water at 165 F end the grain steeping

The Wort is a deep brown/black color from the steeped grains

Turned off the fire to keep the water from rising above 165 F, so start that up and wait for boiling to start

13:08 Boil starts - add bittering hops. Unfortunately, I only noted this as I was putting the hops in, but the instructions said that I'll get a higher IBU than planned because I'm going with a 5 gallon boil, rather than the recipe boil of 2.5 gallons. We'll see

13:43 add aroma hops

13:48 end boil

I have to cool this one in a tub with running water. I'm working on a wort chiller, but that won't be ready for awhile.

I'm also going with a yeast starter. I pulled a bit of the wort when it was hot and put it in a sanatized flask. Let it cool and added some distilled water to bring the temperature to about 88 F. Pitch the yeast in that and wait a bit. Yeast look pretty active.

The yeast is Danstar Windsor dry package yeast.

15:22 Ready to add yeast to the wort.

OG 1.034 Temp 80 F
Adjusted OG is 1.036 right in the middle of the expected range.

Put away to ferment