Brewmaker Scottish Heavy

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Spike101uk

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Ok so I have a 1.8kg tin of Scottish heavy and now plan to add a 1.5kg tin of light liquid malt extract and dry hop after primary with 25g challenger and 10g EKG

Anyone got any ideas hints or tips with this recipe or objections
 
Ok so I have a 1.8kg tin of Scottish heavy and now plan to add a 1.5kg tin of light liquid malt extract and dry hop after primary with 25g challenger and 10g EKG

Anyone got any ideas hints or tips with this recipe or objections

Scottish beers use low amounts of hops for historic taxation reasons. 35g as a dry hop or hop tea is going to do your beer some good, by giving it a bit of a lift, flavour-wise. 3.3kg of LME will give you a decent beer, along the lines of an 80/- or so beer.

Sounds good tae me :thumb:
 
Recipe looks good, but weigh the yeast packet - if it's a small 6/7g one, swap it out for a decent 11/12g packet of yeast. Wilko's Gervin yeast will do, or any British ale yeast. Only ever did one Brewmaker kit but it stuck due to having insufficient yeast.
 
Scottish beers use low amounts of hops for historic taxation reasons.

Source? Our homebrew club brewed a range of historic shilling ale recipes for a Ron Pattinson talk and some of them were heavily hopped at the boil.

For example this recipe had 170g of hops in a 19L batch.

1868 William Younger 100/-

Pale malt 17.75 lb 100.00% 17.75 lb
Cluster 90 min 2.00 oz
Saaz 60 min 2.00 oz
Saaz 20 min 2.00 oz
OG 1076
FG 1034
ABV 5.56
Apparent attenuation 55.26%
IBU 69
SRM 6
Mash at 154º F
Sparge at 185º F
Boil time 105 minutes
pitching temp 57º F
Yeast WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

Anyway, back to the recipe. I wouldn't use S05 as it will attenuate too much and is too clean, you want something that will finish sweeter and enhances the malt character. WLP028 is an excellent yeast, if you want dry yeast mangrove jack M03 Newcastle Dark Ale looks a good choice.

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I thought the historic weird tax thing on Scottish beer was that there was no tax on malt whereas there was in England, which I guess would explain the notion of maltier beers being produced in Scotland. @Sadfield I bet that talk was really interesting, I heard him on the Beersmith podcast last year some time busting myths on Scottish brewing.
 
Really interesting and a nice bloke.

We brewed William Younger and Thomas Usher recipes from 1847, 1868 and 1894, ranging from 60 to 140 shilling. All were pretty much all pale malt, low SRM. Which is at odds with the modern perception that Shilling ales are dark. What did happen was that beers would be coloured with caramel after fermentation to adjust colour depending on the perception of drinkers in the area the beer was being sold to. So the same beer would be a different colour in Glasgow than Newcastle or London. Shilling Ales are so called as they were the beers sold to wholesalers/grocers who would then split down into bottles etc. The shilling referred to the commercial price of a hogshead IIRC.

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Just started this as per my recipe obviously without the hops just yet, with both cans I got a hydrometer reading of 1046, does that sound a I it right
 
1022 after 5 days and little taste it's gonna be real nice

I'd I used 1tsp of demerera sugar for priming per 500ml bottle would that add anything to flavour or shall I just use brewing sugar, decided to just bottle condition these and try filtering from fv to corny with a cheap and cheerful ipa next
 
If it were me I'd up the dry hops to 25g Challenger and 25 - 35g EKG. I find EKG gets a little lost in a dry hop unless it's there in sufficient quantity.
And don't bother with demerera sugar for priming, the contribution to flavour will be negligible. Just stick with table sugar. That's what I always use.
 
So far so good with this ,

If I rack off 5 litres into a glass demijohn and add some dark rum, not sure how much tho, maybe 10cl or 2 miniature bottles, it's a sweet ale already but if I slightly hop it all with EKG and Challenger then add rum to the smaller batch ,

If I had an oak aging stick for 1 week then add rum to beer Just before bottling and priming and let sit and mellow out

anyone got any input.
 
This seems to have stopped fermenting at 1014, seems a little high considering yeast and malt used.


If your think it might have stuck a bit give it we swirl to get the yeast back up and try raising the temp a few degrees to see if she will get going again.

Mind you if you read back Scottish ales can have a bit of sweetness to them.

try above and see what happens
 
Think I broke it with the challenger hops, had a little taste it's clear and a nice colour but it's too earthy and green tea like, will this strong flavour diminish and how long before as it's not very nice, seems to have lost its sweetness
 

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