2015 RCE - LouieMacGoo/The_Professor

[The_Professor]

We've decided on a brew for this RCE.

I had suggested choosing a recipe from here and Louie suggested a Strong Scotch Ale. There are maybe a half dozen old (strong) recipes from William Younger out of Edinburgh. Not your grandpa's Scotch ale, but maybe your great great granddad's.

We've decided to brew the 1879 William Younger No 1.

A couple of interesting quotes from the write up:
It's a legendary beer. The Granddaddy of all strong Scotch Ales: Younger's No. 1. The brewer's flagship beer and one that was once as well-known as Guinness or Bass.
...for the Scottish market...it's called Strong Ale. On the English labels Strong is replaced by Scotch.

We are planning to vary the grain bill a bit. The recipe calls for Scottish Pale malt and Continental Pale malt. Louie is planning on Maris Otter/Belgian Pale and I am planning on Golden Promise/German Pale.

Looks like brew day for both of us will be a few weeks down the road. More to follow...

[mashani]

That's awesome. I love that site.

For future, in case you didn't find this (it is buried somewhere on Barklay Perkins but hard to find):

http://pdtnc.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/b ... gus-co-uk/

You don't need it for your recipe, but for many of the old English beers it comes in handy.

[LouieMacGoo]

I'm actually really excited about this one. I've been wanting to do a Scotish Ale for a while and doing an old recipe like this just makes it that much more unique. Thanks Joe for suggesting the website and the direction on this one.




Edited: Damn autocorrect! :/

[The_Professor]

The thing that is interesting about this William Younger Strong Scotch Ale is the mix of low attenuation and high hopping. Normally one doesn't aim for low attenuation.
In the instructions of a different William Younger recipe there are some suggestions:
Finishing gravity – Ok, so I’ve been getting a lot of emails about how to pull higher finishing gravities for a lot of the beers we do here on the Let’s Brew series and Ron and my book. Most people only worry about not finishing too high. Here, we really want to finish high…and how do we do that. There are many things you can do. Choosing a lower attenuating yeast is a pretty good start. Ensure that your mash temp is actually as high as it is supposed to be. You can also underpitch the yeast by about 25% and still be safe. Under oxygenating will also keep your FG higher. Then finally, you can rack while the beer is a bit green. Pulling beer off yeast will do it all the time. Having said all that it can be very dangerous for your beer to do all of these without experience. A lot of yeast by-products are left in the beer when its pulled off yeast early. Stressed yeast, as you are doing if you ‘under’ anything, can crap a bunch of unfriendly things. So, if you really want to give it a shot. Start with a few things at a time and then go from there. Its hard when you start and you may screw a few things up but for authenticities sake, some of you will give it a go.

The Barclay Perkins site also mentions Scottish fermentation temps. So I think I will aim for 60-65. Although Wyeast suggests 64-74 for the London Ale III.

My batch will be 3.1 gallons. I used Brewtoad to do my calculations. I input the recipe from Barclay Perkins for 5 gallons, resized it to my 3.1 gallons, rounded some numbers, and adjusted for the AA of the hops I actually have.

My recipe is:
7.5 lbs Weyermann (German) Pale malt (for the Continental Pale malt)
4.0 lbs Simpson's Golden Promise (for the Scottish Pale malt)
2.4 oz Cluster (7.2) @ 120
2.0 oz Spalt (3.1) @ 60
0.8 oz Hallertau (3.1) @ 30
0.9 oz EKG (6.47) @ dry hop

Still a couple weeks before brew day on this.

[mashani]

Don't know what your options are but:

An easy way to attenuate a bit less would be to use London ESB (1968) instead. It's max attenuation is about what the low end of the London Ale III is. Profile isn't identical but is really not that dissimilar as long as you keep the fermentation temps low. (higher temps and it's more fruity though). London ESB makes awesome malty beer.

West Yorkshire (1469) also attenuates less and also makes excellent malty beer. Its fruitiness is more "stone fruit" and I like it a lot for darker English beers.

Those two yeasts are my liquid British yeasts of choice when I want something with the malt showing up.

[LouieMacGoo]

I was all prepared to brew today but when I got up this morning it was only 19*out and my belly giving my troubles so hopefully this one will get done tomorrow.

[LouieMacGoo]

BREWED!!!!!

I was finally able to get out and brew today and it felt good. Like I knew that it would now!

Everything went smoothly and I got to use my new refractometer which is so much nicer then the Hydrometer. I did changes a couple of things up with the recipe though. The original recipe called for a 120 min boil which, as far as hop utilization seemed needless so I did a 90 minute boil instead. Also it called for some odd amounts for the hops such as 1.08 oz Hallertauer Mittelfrueh or 2.4 oz of Spalt so I just rounded up or down to the nearest .5 oz.

for a Scottish Strong Ale this should be a pretty good one. Really looking forward to getting this one in the bottle.

12 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3.0 SRM) Grain
6 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain

4.00 oz Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 90.0 min Hop
2.50 oz Select Spalt [4.75 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop
1.00 oz Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [4.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop

1.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days Hop

0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10 mins)

1.0 pkg London Ale III (Wyeast Labs #1318) [124.21 ml] Yeast

Also since the grain bill was over 18 lbs and it was a high grav beer I decided to take a stab at a Second runnings brew and use up some of the hops that I had sitting around. I will post more about that one in a different thread.

[LouieMacGoo]

On Friday i checked the FG using my refractometer and the correction tool in BeerSmith. The FG came out the 1.016 putting the ABV at about 10%. I checked it again on Sunday and there was no change in the numbers so I decided to bottle it. Everything went off without a hitch and there were no problems getting this one in the bottles. The taste sample had a good malty/hoppy balance with a slight sweetness. I'm really looking forward to tasting the progress on this one to see out it evolves.

[LouieMacGoo]

Well I finally got to taste this Scottish Strong Ale and I'm happy with the results. As you can see it has a nice white head and a deep golden color. The taste is well balanced between the malt (caramel notes) and hops but you can tell that this is a big hoppy beer. ABV on this is about 10% but drinks very smooth. This beer is still pretty young (only 3 weeks since bottling). I really think this one will continue to improve with time.

[Inkleg]

WOW! That looks wonderful.

[The_Professor]

Well I finally got to taste this Scottish Strong Ale and I'm happy with the results. As you can see it has a nice white head and a deep golden color. The taste is well balanced between the malt (caramel notes) and hops but you can tell that this is a big hoppy beer. ABV on this is about 10% but drinks very smooth. This beer is still pretty young (only 3 weeks since bottling). I really think this one will continue to improve with time.

WOW, yours looks great and I am running late.
Brew day is finally scheduled for next Saturday.

[The_Professor]

I finally got this 1879 Scotch Ale brewed today. Brew day went great except for an issue with grain clogging my run off that caused me to abandon plans for a second smaller beer.
The recipe calls for a 120 min mash @ 156. I did 60 min @ 157.
The recipe suggests a 1.098 OG. I have 1.106.
I'll be pitching the yeast in a bit.

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that I did do the full 2.5 hour boil.

[The_Professor]

I racked the 1879 Scotch Ale to secondary today. It was in primary for 2 weeks. There was still a thick brown krausen on top of the beer.

My brix was 15 for a calculated gravity of about 1.032 (9.9 ABV). I hope it doesn't go much lower. The recipe calls for a 1.040 FG. It will be in secondary for 2 weeks with a dry hop addition for the last 5 days.

I just grabbed a small taste. WOW, great tasting hop flavor!

[Kealia]

That looks great and not at all like what I would picture a Scottish Ale looking like. Sounds like a delicious beer!

[The_Professor]

That looks great and not at all like what I would picture a Scottish Ale looking like. Sounds like a delicious beer!

Of course that is what is interesting about this recipe. It is not per BJCP guidelines but instead is supposed to be what an Edinburgh brewery made in 1879 and marketed as "Strong Ale" in Scotland and "Scotch Ale" in England.