Brewer’s Notes
Yesterday I finally got around to brewing the Scottish Ale. This year I formulated a new recipe that is very different to previous years. It’s going to be a bigger, bolder beer with a more complex malt profile with crystal, roasted barley and a little smoked and peated malts making a contribution. It came in at a specific gravity of 1.072 and fermentation is off and running with the gravity dropping to 1.057 overnight and the temperature rising to 76F. As you can see from the photo the yeast head is well developed and very active with many large bubbles of CO2 emerging. When standing on the step to manually rouse the brew one gets quite a blast of CO2 along with a nice hop aroma!
The yeast head of the Scottish Ale fermentation.
Today I’m brewing an Amber Ale (4.8% abv with a medium body and a nice assertive, though not overpowering hop presence) and moving a Dark Horse (Dark Mild, 4% abv) from FV into conditioning tank. The Mild is one of my all time favorite beers so I will naturally be filling a number of firkins. Cask conditioned mild is a sublime beer, the ultimate session beer in my opinion. A couple of these firkins will be going out to ChurchKey so look out for it if you’re in that neighborhood. The Dark Horse has also been doing very nicely at the Commonwealth Gastro Pub in D.C. so we’ll be sending more out for their beer engine. Time to go and clean those firkins!
Cheers
Steve
Tags: Dark Horse, scottish ale
I am looking forward to the Scottish Ale.
My wife and I are running the Celtic Solstice 5 miler in Druid Hill Park and then coming by for Br/Lunch. Is the Oaked 3 Lions going to last? If not what is on deck for the cask line up?
I imagine it will still around then … the big beers tend to last a bit longer but of course with the cask breather system that’s not an issue in terms of quality of the beer. Next in line for the beer engine is Oak Aged William’s Winter Warmer!