The Beerening: Wee heavy brew day

I haven't written anything about my homebrewing hobby yet, but this past brew day I did several very interesting things that probably deserve to be discussed a little bit.

With late fall and winter rapidly approaching I really wanted to brew something rich and malty, with a lot of complexity to enjoy, but low ABV so I could drink it after only about a week in the bottle and drink a couple of them without getting owned.  I settled on a Scotch Ale 80/-, which should be between 4-5% ABV.  Scotch ales are copper to amber colored, malty, toasty, caramely, with very little hoppiness and a nice touch of fruity esthers from yeast.

My basic recipe was:

63% American Six-row Pale (7.5 pounds)
17% American Vienna (2 pounds)
13% Brown Sugar (1.5 pounds)
4% American Crystal 40L (0.5 pounds)
4% Belgian Aromatic (0.5 pounds)

1 oz Fuggles @ 60 minutes
1.5 oz Kent Goldings @ 20 minutes

The color of this recipe is about 9 SRM, which is within the style but I really would like it a little darker.

To darken it up I decided to try two new techniques.  The first being the decoction mash, and the second being deliberate kettle caramelization.  Both of these techniques add certain flavors and will darken the color of my beer.

A bit of background:
Decoction mashing is a result of early brewers' inability to accurately measure temperatures while mashing.  The premise is that after mashing in and stirring your grain bed well, you pull an amount of the thick part of the mash (basically the soaked grain material) out of the mashtun and boil it for several minutes before adding it back to the main mash.  The technique is a well known hallmark of German brewing, and adds bready and biscuity flavors as well as darkening the mash.

Kettle Caramelization is simple a side affect of a concentrated wort.  An extended boil is a good way to condense the wort to make higher ABV beers, and would cause caramelization.  Most modern Scotch ale recipes just include a decent amount of Crystal malt, but in Brewing Classic Styles Jamil discusses a smaller unhopped boil whose entire purpose is to deliberately caramelize some of your wort.  This traditional technique adds caramal notes, toffee flavors, and residual sweetness to the brew since the process renders some of the sugars unfermentable.  It's not as reliable as using Crystal malt, but it's an interesting technique to try.

On to my actual brew:
I hit my first mash rest of 145F and let it rest for 20 minutes, then started pulling thick mash for my first decoction.  Michael Dawson of BrewingTV advocates 1qt thick mash per pound of grist, but I wasn't sure how much this would raise my temperature so I pulled off a bit less. 

 This is about 6 quarts of thick mash, it looked a little watery so I added 2 more quarts that were more diligently strained, resulting in this:

I boiled these 8 quarts of thick mash for about 15 minutes.

There was a minor technical issue with my stove and it took me longer to get the grains to a boil than I wanted.  My improvised mashtun lost a lot of heat, so when I added the decoction back in  I barely managed to break even.  So I stirred the mash up and pulled another 4 quarts of thick mash and brought that to a boil.  I let it boil about 10 minutes and added it back to my main mash, raising the temperature to 149F.  I felt that was a decent rest temp so I let the mash rest there for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes I lautered.  My grist absorbed a LOT of water and I only ended up with 1.5 gallons of first runnings.  However, those running had a gravity of 1.075, which is pretty decent.  In Brewing Classic Styles Jamil recommends pulling 1 gallon of first runnings and boiling that off.  The common discussion on the internet involves boiling this down to 1 or 2 quarts.  I set the runnings to boil and wandered off to watch some Star Trek.  About an hour and some odd later I had lost most of the volume and was down to about half a gallon.  The color was gorgeous and it smelled absolutely incredible.

I decided to sparge with about 3.5 gallons at 155F.  I heated the water and then poured it into the mashtun.  The soaked grain absorbed NONE of it so I had a really thin sparge.  I let it sit for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly, and lautered again.  I ended up collecting all 3.5 gallons at a gravity of 1.020, which is a very weak 2nd running.  The color was substantially lighter due to not being boiled to death.

From there I mixed the caramelized wort and the 2nd runnings until there was about 3.5 gallons in my boil kettle.  After the hot break, I added the remaining 2nd runnings as the kettle boiled off until I had all of the 2nd runnings in the kettle.  Then I added my hops and did a regular 60 minute boil.

After the boil I cooled the wort to about 90F and mixed in 2.5 gallons of cold water, bringing it to about 70F.  I had a final volume of 5.5 gallons of 1.049 wort, into which I pitched 500mL of Scottish Ale starter.

It's been fermenting at roughly 65F ambient temperature.  It'll probably another 2-3 weeks until I bottle it, and then a week in the bottle should have it ready for drinking at right around Thanksgiving.

Cooling, the cold break is particularly hypnotic.

Drink on!

--PXA