Sunday, May 19, 2013

#27 Scottish Export and Water Chemistry

Looking to balance my sour and hoppy beers of recent with something a bit dark and malty but not as dark as the banana stout I decided to try my hand at a Scottish Export ale.  While I have been taking water chemistry into account for a while now I did a full water profile for this beer adding minerals to my moderately soft water to reach a bit more complex character.




Update 6/9/13
Gravity down to 1.010, seems ready to bottle. Initial impression is sweet coffee character, more than I had expected from this small amoun of kiln coffee malt.

7/30/13
Had waited to post this hoping it would improve over time but it still seems a bit off. This is the second time I've had issues with Wyeast1728 Scottish Ale yeast. This may be coincidental, be a factor of the yeast strain which I'm particularly sensitive to or maybe due to fermentation temperatures. While it's hard to pin this beer's off flavor on a single characteristic (it reminds me a bit of both oxidation and autolysis without sticking out as either) the yeast or the malt (old pale chocolate malt and my first time using Franco-belges kiln coffee malt) seem the most likely suspects. I'm hoping some of this character will fade or  blend into the beer over time and this will become more drinkable.

10/3/13
Beer hasn't really improved with time but I decided to do a more complete tasting anyway.

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