Posts Tagged ‘scottish ale’
End of week round up
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Firstly, no Friday Question this week as I’m letting last weeks question for the bottle of Tactical Nuclear Penguin run until next Friday. It’s something of a relief actually as it’s becoming quite a challenge to come up with a question and prize every week!
I’m getting ready to move the Strongman Pale Ale out of FV and into conditioning tank. I’ve just weighed out hops for dry hopping the tank which I think will add an extra dimension to this ale (the “dimension” of aroma!!….I think my former Physics and Biochemistry professors might have something to say about that!) We’ll be doing a couple of casks which will be dry hopped with Maryland grown Chinook, hand picked and air dried in Frederick County, in contrast to the Kent Goldings which I’m using in the conditioning tank. I’d like to do more casks of this but we used so much cooperage on the Dark Horse yesterday that we don’t have any more available at this time. I’m praying that we get some empty firkins returned next week so I can fill them with the Biere de Garde. Speaking of which, that fermentation is being crash cooled at the moment. The Belgian Ale Yeast strain behaved very differently from my English Ringwood, fermenting well at a lower temperature than I am normally used to and with little yeast head accumulation, almost like a lager yeast. I had to battle to keep the fermentation below 70F whereas I’m normally trying to keep it above 72F! We’re expecting a grain delivery today so a second batch of Scottish Ale is on the schedule for Tuesday.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, January 15th, 2010
First off, before I get on to the Friday Question I just want you cask ale lovers out there know that the Scottish Ale is now the Brewer’s Choice beer engine at The Pratt Street Ale House, it’s big and bold, full of malt character with an underlying sweetness and hints of smoke and peat and is a little over 7% a.b.v.
O.K., on to last weeks question, what is the weight of hops used in producing the Strongman Pale Ale? Well Mr. Sandy Mitchell’s “price is right strategy” paid off this time as the actual weight of hops used is a little more than all of the guesses at 14lbs. For those of you interested the hop additions are as follows: start of boil… 5 lbs First Gold, after 1 hour of boil 1 lb Kent Goldings, after 1 hour and 50 minutes 1 lb Kent Goldings. In the hop percolator 3 lbs Kent Goldings and 2 lbs Bramling Cross and last but not least 2 lbs of Kent Goldings for dry hopping in conditioning. Congratulations Sandy.
As you know, this weeks prize is something a bit special, a bottle of the super rare and super expensive Tactical Nuclear Penguin, BrewDog’s “strongest beer in the world” monster. Because of the nature of this prize I’m going to let this Question stand for 2 weeks, the winner will be announced on Friday 29th January. As usual, answers must be posted via the comment section below, one answer per person only please and the closest guess to the actual answer wins it! In the event of a tie the answer posted first gets it, judges decision is final etc. Oh yeah and you have to be able to come and pick the prize up, o.k. So, the question …. this beer is well travelled. Firstly from Scotland to my parents’ house in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother then dispatched the 2 bottles to me courtesy of the Royal Mail. She posted it on 6th January and it arrived on 13th January. What I want to know is how much did it cost my Mum to ship these 2 bottles from England to Baltimore? Good luck, one of those bottles could be yours!
The Friday Question
Friday, January 8th, 2010
There was a good spread of answers for last weeks question and it was a close thing but CDoubleIPA came closest with his guess of 16, congratulations. The actual number of different seasonal / one-off brews that we put through was 15. This is maybe a little on the low side because of the refurbishments at the Ale House. I didn’t brew our first (in this case Strongman Pale Ale) until the last week of February. I’m pretty confident that we’ll brew a few more this year. The Hot Monkey Love is already in process and the Strongman Pale Ale is on the schedule next week. After that I’ll be brewing the Biere de Garde which I’m particularly excited about as I’ll be using a different strain of yeast for that one, which will be the first time for 10 years that I haven’t brewed with Ringwood yeast! I’ll probably be tweaking the recipe a little as well. I’m also still hoping to squeeze the Darkness (dark wheat beer) into the schedule if tap space allows.
Well on to this weeks question. Firstly the prize. Now, despite what’s been going on in City Hall recently I personally frown upon the illegal appropriation of gift cards so, dear readers, we here at Oliver Breweries offer you the chance to win a gift card ($25 value) for use at The Pratt Street Ale House legitimately. All you have to do is answer the following simple question and it could be yours. As I mentioned earlier, the next seasonal ale I will brew is the Strongman Pale Ale. Now, by my standards, this is quite a hopped-up beer although the brewers at BrewDog or Stone would probably regard it as a mild ale in comparison to some of their “off the chart i.b.u.” offerings. So what I want from you is a guess as to the total weight of hops that will go into this 7 barrel brew? As usual, please enter via the comment section below, judges decision is final etc. If anybody is interested, I will be avoiding Cascade like the plague, and instead will be using my old friends First Gold, Kent Goldings and Bramling Cross. You never know, maybe I’ll get the i.b.u. measured for this one, there’s a first time for everything after all!
The Scottish Ale
The Scottish Ale (the cask version pictured above in an original Oliver Scottish Ale thistle glass courtesy of Sandy Mitchell) will be on tap later today . I will post an update as soon as it goes on!
Cheers
Steve
Scottish Ale on cask
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Don’t forget the Scottish Ale makes its debut on cask @ Metropolitan Coffee House in Federal Hill tonight. 6pm, upstairs bar.
Mid-week update.
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Tomorrow night our Scottish Ale will be making its cask debut at Metropolitan Coffee House and Wine Bar (902 Charles St.) for their regular Firkin Thursday event. For those of you unfamiliar with Metropolitan, it’s a wonderful neighbourhood bar/ restaurant … a solid tap line-up and fantastic food. The Firkin will be available in the upstairs bar from 6pm. The Scottish Ale returns, bigger and bolder, after a years hiatus due to the renovations at The Pratt Street Ale House last January. It’s a completely new recipe, full bodied with an underlying sweetness you’d expect from a Scottish Ale with hints of smoked and peated malt in the finish and is about 7% abv.
Next Wednesday (13th) The Peeping Tom Porter will make its cask debut at our pint night @ Frisco Grille in Columbia. Also on tap will be the Scottish Ale and 3 Lions so come along, meet the genial brewers and snag a souvenir pint glass.
The Peeping Tom will also be on cask @ Max’s Taphouse on Thursday 14th January.The Scottish Ale & Peeping Tom should be hitting the taps at the Ale House sometime next week. For those of you in the D.C. area casks of Peeping Tom, the Scottish Ale and dry hopped ESB are shipping to Churchkey and ESB should be heading to the Commonwealth Gastro Pub also.
By-the-way, I’m shamelessly promoting January as “buy the brewer a beer month” … yeah, that’s right, it’s my Birthday soon and I have now spent over a third of my life brewing beer …. how did that happen?!
Cheers for now
Steve
Mid week round-up
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Well here we are …. the last brew day of 2009! We’re ending with a Bishop’s Breakfast and, as it happens I’ll be filling some firkins and a kilderkin with the Bishop’s Indulgence and moving the rest to conditioning. I’ll be starting the next year with a bang by brewing the Hot Monkey Love … a statement of intent for the coming year! I’m awaiting delivery of 4 Woodford Reserve barrels (big shout out to Barrett @ The District Chophouse for supplying the info for making it possible) so we’ll be doing some interesting things with those. The first 3 seasonal brews for 2010 are in various stages of process. The Scottish Ale (7%abv) is in conditioning, The Peeping Tom Porter (4.4%abv) is fermenting and, as I’ve already mentioned, the Bishop’s Indulgence (8%abv) is moving to conditioning today. Firkins of the Scottish Ale will be going out to Max’s and ChurchKey next week so look out for them on tap in the near future. In the second week of January I’ll also be brewing the Strongman Pale Ale which will probably be around the 7.5% – 8% abv mark.
Casks of the Bishop's Indulgence
Four firkins of The Bishop’s Indulgence will be shipped to outside accounts. A kilderkin with American Oak is staying at The Pratt Street Ale House for release in early February.
Don’t forget to enter The Friday Question …. you’ve got until Friday a.m. when I’ll post the answer.
Cheers for now. Have a great New Year celebration.
Steve
Brewer’s Notes
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
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
The Friday Question
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Well it seems like last week’s question was a tricky one. I received only three answers, all different and none of which were the answer I was looking for although it was very interesting reading about these other breweries. The one that I was actually thinking of was the German Brewing Company in Cumberland, Maryland. The brewery began operations in 1901 but with the U.S. entering the First World War and increasing anti-German sentiment the directors thought it prudent to change the name to The Liberty Brewing Company. With the advent of Prohibition the name was changed to Queeno Co. until brewing operations resumed as The German Brewing Company in 1933. However the Second World War brought another change in name, this time to the Queen City Brewing Company which it retained until the brewery’s closure in the 1970s (although the Old German Beer brand was again used in the post war era). If you’re ever in Cumberland, check out the exhibit at The Allegany Museum, it’s interesting stuff.
On to this weeks question and back to the i-pod for one last time. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts the first thing I do when I get into the brewery in the morning is put the i-pod on shuffle and let it play until the end of the brewing day (about 9 hours later). As I write this “Magic” by Cud is playing … a 80’s Brit indie classic! What I want to know is how many songs on average will be played during the brewing day. Just so you know I will record how many play during next weeks brew days to work out the average. Please enter via the comment section below, one entry per person please. In case of a tie the winner will be selected at random from the tied entries. Up for grabs is a 3 Lions t-shirt and growler of 3 Lions Ale to help keep you warm on these cold Winter nights. Speaking of cold, it’s 46F down here so I’m practically sitting on the office heater as I write this in a vain attempt to stay “warm” (which is very much a relative term down here).
The week is rounding out with an Irish Red. We have a 3 Lions, Dark Horse and Pagan Porter in fermentation so expect to see these in cask in the coming weeks. We’ll be doing some of the Porter casks with vanilla, a favorite of mine and of course we’ll be aging some of the 3 Lions on Oak. Next week we’ll be brewing the Scottish Ale and The Bishop’s Indulgence (yes, you can pay to get to Heaven), our next 2 seasonal offerings as well as the Ironman Pale Ale and Amber Ale.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Oh, you foolish people, how you underestimate my obsessive-compulsive personality when it comes to music. Didn’t I tell you that I’ve been collecting Blur records and compact discs since their very first single!? Don’t you realize that I seek out those elusive radio discs/fan club cds/live promos/remixes etc. God bless e-bay (mmm, that Greek promo of “Supa Shoppa” is tempting)! So, the upshot of the matter is that no one was even close to the correct answer. However, the rules are that the closest answer wins so here are the results … (drum roll) …. I have 313 Blur songs on my i-pod which makes Brad’s guess of 144 the closest. Congratulations Brad, you win a growler of Merry Ole Ale and a couple of bottles of English Christmas ale. I have to say I liked Mitch’s reference to “Song 2″ so Mitch, if you’re at the Pratt Street Ale House when I’m in the brewery make yourself known and I’ll buy you a beer or two.
So I guess I’d better make this week a brewery themed question (although I do have another i-pod based question for next week!)
On my recent Thanksgiving trip out of town I had the pleasure of visiting a museum that had a nice display about the city’s brewing heritage. The city in question had 2 significant breweries (now sadly no longer with us) one of which began brewing in the late 1800s and the other that began brewing in the early 1900s. One of those breweries had reason to change its name on a number of occasions (including during Prohibition) but returned to the original brewery name or re-introduced its original brands name until its demise. What I want to know is, what was the original name of the brewery, where was it located and why did it change its name?
Please take note : This week please e-mail answers to me at steve.oliverale@gmail.com , one attempt per person please, judge’s decision is final. Just to make a change all correct answers will be entered into a random draw. I’ve got to admit, I haven’t got a clue what the prize will be yet but I’m sure it will involve drinking beer!
The new yeast is working nicely. Tuesday’s Blonde Ale is down to 1.016 and Wednesday’s Best Bitter is at 1.028. Yeast from the Blonde was used to pitch yesterday’s Irish Red (OG 1.058) which is down to 1.034 overnight. Today Justin is brewing an Ironman so our 7 barrel fermentation room will be full. It smells wonderful in there, with all of those volatiles coming off the open fermentations. I’m going to put the 3 Lions off until Monday as I want to make sure that we’ve got a really good pitch volume ready for it. It’s getting cold in the brewery so if the brew is under-pitched we’ll end up getting a long lag phase as the wort will cool excessively overnight slowing the yeast down even more. This is even more important for the 3 Lions due to it’s high starting gravity (1.075). If it doesn’t get off to a good start we’ll be in for a long and troublesome fermentation. Coincidentally, that frees up my Sunday for a trip to the Dogfish/Sierra Life & Limb brunch at Pizzeria Paradiso in D.C. Result! (Honestly, it was coincidence).
Next week will also see the Scottish Ale brew day. I’m going for a slightly bigger beer this year, around the 1.070 mark but obviously to get that malt sweetness you’d expect from the style we’ll be finishing at around 1.020 (and yes, I know that even that may be considered too low! ). The malt grist consists of English Optic Malt, Dark Crystal, Roasted Barley, a touch of Smoked and Peated malts and wheat. Hops will be Challenger and Kent Goldings. Also in the next couple of weeks I’ll be brewing a new Stout, probably around the 8% abv mark with cacao nibs in the fermentation, something big and bold to get us through a cold January!