Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Scotch Ale

I stopped into our local brewpub (Marzoni's) for a few beers and some fine grub. They make six beers that are the everyday beers and usually have 2 different ones on tap. During October, you can have an Octoberfest beer, Spring time was a Sassion, etc. Currently, they have a Scotch Ale and an Imperial Stout on tap. I tried the Scotch Ale and for those of you that do not like a lot of hops, then this beer is one to make. You can taste the malt in a Scotch Ale and is a nice drinking beer. My wife even liked it and she is not a beer drinker. So this week's recipe is a Scotch Ale.

This recipe has a variety of procedures that may be new to some beginners. Give it a try and see how well you do.

Read This Week's Recipe

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Or, If you want to try an easier recipe, here is one to try.

Ingredients:

  • 6.6 lb Ireks munich light LME
  • 2.0 lb Ireks munich malt (10L ?)
  • 0.5 lb M&F crystal malt (60L)
  • 0.5 lb Ireks crystal malt (20L)
  • 3.0 oz M&F chocolate malt (350L)
  • 4.0 oz white wheat malt (2L)
  • 2.0 oz Hugh Baird peat smoked malt (2L)
  • 1.0 oz East Kent Goldings (whole, 60 min boil)
  • 1.0 oz Fuggles (whole, 15 min boil)
  • 1 tsp Irish moss (rehydrated, 15 min boil)
  • Wyeast 1338 (european ale, 1 qt starter)
  • 4.5 oz corn sugar (primimg)

Procedure:

- mashed all the grains in 4 qts of 156F water for 1 hr
- sparged with 4 qts of 170F water
- SG of runnings: 1.036 in ~7 qts
- added LME, made volume up to 3 gal, boiled for 1 hr
- chilled with immersion chiller, aerated, made volume up to 5 gal, aerated some more, pitched 1 qt starter
- fermented at 65 - 68F

To do the mash on my stove, I just heat up the mash water to ~165F (in my kettle) then drop in the grain bag containing the crushed grains. Stir real well, let it sit for a minute, then check the temp. If its to low (which it will be) either add small amounts of boiling water (1 cup at a time, stir, let it sit for a minute, then check the temp) or add heat with the stove burner on medium heat while gently stirring constantly. After you hit the mash temp, cover it up and let it sit for 1 hour. At the end of the 1 hour, I lift the grain bag just above the surface of the wort and sparge by pouring the sparge water over the grains gently with a measuring cup.

As you can see, my mash setup/technique is pretty simple and doesn't require a lot of extra equipment. I'm not trying to get the max possible extraction from the grains, only the flavor/body that was missing before I started doing these partial mashes.


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