Scotch Ale - Brew Day

Today I brewed the Scotch Ale kit I got from www.morebeer.com. So without further ado, here's how it went down:


Starting from the top right and going clockwise we have 2 lbs. light dry malt extract, a Whirfloc tablet, about 1.5 lbs. of steeping grains, which is a blend of some lighter and darker grains, and finally 1 oz. of Glacier hops (6.0% AA, for boiling).


Here we have 9 lbs. of ultralight liquid malt extract, and some liquid, pitchable yeast of the Edinburgh strain.


I was brewing alone today, so I came up with a nifty method of putting the steeping grains into the grain bags. I use a bowl to keep the bag open while I dump grains in. Works pretty well.

I steeped the grains for 30 minutes at about 160F in 2 gallons of water before adding the malt, which is shown in the next picture.


Here I have already added the dry malt extract and am currently adding the liquid malt extract.


Here I am bringing it up to a boil. You can see that the dry malt extract has created this thick, creamy, foamy head. I've never used dry malt extract before so I've never seen this before.


Here's the wort just after I've added the hops (and lifted the pot up to keep it from boiling over).

The hops were boiled for 60 minutes, with the Whirfloc tablet added to the last 20 minutes of the boil. The Whirfloc is a fining agent that flocculates the proteins that cause haze. I've never really had a problem with haze in my other beers when I haven't used it, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway and see what happens.



Next I cooled the wort then added it to the carboy and topped it off at 5 gallons with more water. Here I'm waiting for the temperature to stabilize so that I can pitch the yeast.

I had a better time with opening the liquid yeast vial this time. It was only out of the fridge for about 3 hours and did not explode when I opened it.


Here it is in my closet, blowoff tube attached, ready to start fermenting.

Since it's getting warmer and my closet is south-facing, I'll probably have to employ some sort of cooling method to keep the carboy between 60-66F. Maybe just putting some frozen water bottles in close proximity to it will do the trick.

The expected OG for this beer is 1.070 to 1.075, but mine read 1.092. So either it's off because of all the trub suspended in the beer or it's going to end up being a pretty strong Scotch Ale. Time will tell.

I also calculated the bitterness for this beer and it's going to be about 21 IBU, which is a little less than the style definition of a Scotch Ale, so it should be nice and malty.

Anyway, that's all for now, I'll update again once fermentation gets going.