Bottled the Scotch Ale today. Had the carboy down in the basement since I racked it. I brought it up last night and let it settle. It actually started fermenting again, and when I checked the gravity it was about 1.008.

So, I bottled up 6 bombers and 32 12-ozers which I will mark with a brown S. The taste was slightly toothpastey/bubblegumy perhaps because of the higher temp I tried to ferment it at. However, it was also malty and a bit roasty. I will try to let this sit until mid-March....

HopEd

Tested the Scotch Ale today and FG was 1.012. I can't decide if I want to dry hop it or not. The nylon bag that I would use to contain the pellets is in the Celebration Ale keg which is 3/4 full. I have a regular hop bag but I doubt if that would work, and after the fiasco with the Big Brew English Pale Ale I'm not really interested in using gelatin again. So, I've either got to fish the nylon bag out of the keg or forgo the dry hopping. I suppose it would be more important to see what this Scotch...

HopEd

Trying to brew a scotch ale.

I boiled almost 8 gallons of water in my brew pot for half an hour and dumped it in the tun for about the same amount of time. I put 19 quarts of water back in the tun and added my grain. The middle temperature started out at 163, but I got it down to 158 in 10 minutes. Temp fell to 153 with about 5 minutes left in the 60 minute mash.

Did the Vourlaf, added 14 quarts of 180 degree water for the sparge, and letting it sit for 65 minutes....

HopEd

Went to Bev Art today to have a keg checked. Got a new gasket for the top. Took it home and made the replacement. Nice and easy. Gassed it up to 30 psi. No leaks so, I decided to keg the Celebration Ale clone.

The FG was 1.008. Sanitized the keg and a nylon bag. Jammed a gallon freezer bag full of backyard Cascade hop cones in the keg and filled it up.

Unfortunately I did not weigh the bag down well enough, but the sample tasted really good. Hopefully I can carb it...

HopEd

Brewing a Sierra Nevada Celebration-type Ale clone. I think I'm using a different recipe from last year. This one requires 5# of DME which I do not have, but I might have upped the grain bill when I was at the store. I seemed like I have more than 5.5# of grain in the tun.

I boiled almost 8 gallons of water in my brew pot for half an hour and dumped it in the tun for about the same amount of time. I poured the water back into the pot and the temp was 176 degrees. I put 14 quarts of...

HopEd