10-Gallon (38-L) Stovetop Scottish 70/- Ale

Flock_of_sheepThis is a recipe for making 10 gallons (38 L) of Scottish ale from 3 gallons (11 L) of wort boiled on your stovetop. I have not tried this . . . yet. But I think the idea is interesting (and sound), so I’m publishing it for brewers willing to take a bit of risk. (I think the worst that could happen is that it turns out a little darker and little less bitter than planned.) Sometime this year, I’ll give it whirl and post the results here.

I chose Scottish 70/- ale because it fits the criteria for a beer made from a highly diluted wort — it’s low in gravity, low in bitterness and amber in color. In addition, some brewers of this style intentionally darken some of their wort with a hard boil. So, if this happens due to the high wort density, it won’t ruin the beer. This is formulated as a countertop partial mash, based on doubling the ingredients from my 5-gallon (19-L) extract recipe of the same beer. I did make a couple changes to the recipe. The biggest change was substituting some relatively high-alpha Challenger hops for some of the Goldings hops in the recipe, to cut down on the amount of hop debris at the bottom of the brewpot. I also dialed down the amount of Munich malt a bit.

 

Pharming Polly Scottish Ale

Scottish 70/- ale

by Chris Colby

Partial mash (countertop); English units

 

DESCRIPTION

A Scottish 70/- (seventy shilling) ale, also called a Scottish heavy ale, is — despite the “heavy” moniker — a session beer. It is heavy compared to a Scottish 60/- ale, which is a similar beer, only lower in gravity. (A Scottish wee heavy is a different style of beer altogether.) This amber beer is balanced towards the malt, but only slightly so. The clean ale strains will yield a beer that emphasizes the malt (including amber malt) and hops over yeast byproducts. It is a great beer to have if you want to have another — exactly like the one before — when you’re done.

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10 Gallons (38 L) of Beer from a Stovetop Boil? (Part 2 of 2)

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Brewing beer on your stovetop is convenient — and you can yield over 5 gallons (19 L) of beer in some circumstances.

This is the second part of an article on yielding 10 gallons (38 L) of beer from a stovetop wort boil. The first part dealt with the wort density during the boil and bitterness. 

Color

When you boil a dense wort, the amount of ingredients alone will make it darker than many pale beers — deep golden at a minimum, if it is an all-malt beer. However, darker worts also pick up more color during the boil. There’s no way (that I know of) to calculate how much color will develop. However, if you were trying to brew a pale beer by boiling a very dense wort and diluting it, it would likely turn out too dark. This would also limit the number of BJCP styles that could be brewed with this level of dilution in the fermenter. At a minimum, I assume that the beer would turn out a light amber (although I haven’t tested this). So to be safe, we’ll only consider beers that are amber or darker.

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