scottish 80 #2 bottling day

bottled up the scottish 80, attempt #2 4oz brown sugar in 2 cups of water, boiled and cooled. got about 550 oz out of this (~4.3 gallons). 1.015 fg. tastes a little sour and bitter. smelled like bread when i popped the top, then smelled like fruit. i'm not sure about this, left it in the primary for 5 weeks(?), trying to avoid bottle bombs. i also brushed out all the bottles with star san, rinsed, dried, then sanitized. i even cleaned the bottle trees. trying to eliminate any opportunistic bacteria or yeast since the last couple of batches have been a little off (last export 80 was a bunch of geysers). i'm going to test the first one on the 10th and then wait until the 13th if it's not ready. the last bad batch burnt my morale, so i hope this goes better.

brewing scottish export 80 again

i think i got the two brews mixed up. one of them is not so good. i think it is the emma's ale since i used reclaimed yeast. i'm doing the scottish export 80 because inki is enjoying the one that doesn't suck. the sucky one has some crazy phenol/alcohol tastes, so i'm going with the one that i used fresh yeast on. hopefully this is the one. gonna do it by the book.

nope, i opened another bottle of the explosive geyser beer and poured what didn't immediately foam away into a glass. It has the same amber look of the stuff i just brewed. i think i'll leave this batch in secondary for a while longer than the last batch. i think i recall it not getting very close to fg, so that might explain it. for now, i have about 8 bottles of 'exciting' export 80 left to deal with. since the brown ale turned out so good, i'll try and replicate what i did with that as much as possible next time, probably a nice, slow, low-temperature steep that gave it a lot of dark malt character without too much astringency. 1.046/7 for the sg on the export 80. doin' it by the book for this one.

racked emma's ale and export 80 some time this weekend

both gravities hadn't changed much. i forgot that i didn't have 2 carboys so i racked the scotch export 80 on friday(?) (1.020) and the brown ale on sunday(?) (1.015). this post is back-dated to try and keep track of the approximate time of racking.

export 80 and emma's ale gravities

export 80 at 1.020, looking finished lots of floaty chunks. tastes peaty for some reason ;-P. this one had whirlfloc, hopefully the chunks settle in the carboy.

emma's at 1.015, maybe ready for carboy? tastes really smooth, is almost a red ale. perhaps from a more rigorous/quick boil, thanks to the timer thermometer? might darken in carboy...

gonna start reading these daily and maybe rack simultaneously, saving me a clean-up, kinda.

scottish export 80

sg 1.063? overshot 1.054. i'm just good at coaxing the sugar. new thermometer with alarm thanks to inki! poured white labs 1728 english ale yeast, straight from the vial, see how she goes.

started bubbling sometime the next day. still bubbing on 25th, so yeast probably good with the no-starter.