test bottle -- barleywine

i've siphoned off a 22 oz bottle of the barleywine, adding about a teaspoon of brown sugar. from what i'm reading i may have to put some yeast in when real bottling time comes around. the stuff is still at around 1.030, tastes pretty hot, but also on the sweet side. i think bottling yeast will help trim off some of the extra sweetness. i'll check on the test bottle in 2 weeks or so to see how it tastes before deciding to pitch.

i've harvested the yeast from the primary (lots of trub) of the scottish 80 to see what i can do with it. so far it looks like it's not super-live.

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.

emma's ale pt 2, re-using yeast

i decided to use the 1275 cake from the last batch of emma's ale on this one. i did a half-assed job of washing the yeast and put it into 2 quart mason jars in the fridge (2 weeks). warmed them up yesterday and did a 650ml starter. not much bubbly activity, but it's cloudy (both jars, minus the jar beer). still a bit of trub.

for this boild, i did the pseudo sparge with the grain bag. in the middle of doin it now, in fact.

the original emma's ale was bottled 2 weeks-ish ago and is tasting fine. a bit drier and maybe more bitter and malty, but nice. used big bottles for most of it, saving a 6 of 12-oz bottles for the dregs. have been taste-testing over the last week with the 12ies and it has matured nicely, though maybe a little champaigny despite doing only 4 oz of brown sugar for bottling. maybe take that down another 1/2 oz for this next one.

edit -- og was maybe 1.054?

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.