Scottish Pale Ale tasting

First Tasting

After 11 days of bottle conditioning it's time to check the Scottish Pale Ale brewed on Jan 31st.

It's excellent, I am really pleased with this. It is beautifully bitter and full bodied, very smooth, very clear and extremely drinkable despite the strength (5.8%) I might make this again. It's going to be even better after a few more weeks conditioning. I must remember not to drink it all as I am entering it in the Stockport Beer Festival Homebrew Competition, and they want four bottles! 

Update 23/03/2017

Just tasted this again and it's got better. Very crisp clean taste, extremely clear and well carbonated. I find it almost tastes like a strong European lager. The Edinburgh Ale yeast is exceptional.

Bottling - Scottish 100/- Pale Ale

Bottling Day

Once again I have managed to be sufficiently organised to manage some bottling on a brewday. The Scottish Pale Ale I brewed on Jan 31st finished at 1.015 resulting in 5.84% ABV and 72.5% apparent attenuation. This was supposed to match an 1879 recipe from William Younger but my OG was 10 points lower than forecast at 1.060. Fortunately the FG was also 10 points lower and apparent attenuation 10 percentage point higher so the final ABV was an exact match for the historic recipe.

Brewday 31/01/2017 - Scottish 100 Shilling Ale

William Younger 1879 100/- Scottish Ale

This is a historic recipe provided by top beer writer Ron Pattinson whose blog Shut Up About Barclay Perkins is a great source of old ale recipes. I'm brewing this 100/- ale as part of a homebrew event where members of Manchester homebrew club and my group Chorlton home brewers are brewing several of these 19th century Scottish ales to bring to a tasting with Ron at Beer Nouveau in Manchester on April 2nd. I'm not sure how we'll know if they taste authentic but hopefully they will all be great beers.

Recipe

This is a very simple recipe!

Pale Malt (I used Golden Promise for extra Scottish authenticity) 5kg

Cluster 90mins - 58g

Goldings 30mins - 58g

Yeast - WLP028 Edinburgh Ale Yeast

OG should be 1.070 and I'm aiming for 17lt into the fermenter.

Results

Not brilliant, I got 16lt in the fermenter but an OG of only 1.060. That's only 62% efficiency, I usually get about 75%. Hopefully the yeast will achieve 70-75% attenuation resulting in an ABV of 5.8% which is close to the original recipe specification. The difference between my recipe and the brewing record is the level of apparent attenuation, the historic recipe has apparent attenuation at 63% which is low for this yeast strain.