As passionate as I am about beer here, I'm probably equally passionate about fine single malt Scotch whisky. I maintain a nice single malt collection, which I quite enjoy when I'm not thirsty for homebrew.
While the Scots are quite remarkable with their single malt whisky, their rich and creamy Scotch ales are quite delicious too! I personally think of Scotch ales as a winter time beer (maybe just because it's cold in Scotland?), so I'm brewing mine here in winter in Texas. Actually, a winter day in Texas is about the same as a summer day in Scotland -- just lightly chilly with a hint of rain in the air.
I started this brew in the early afternoon, knowing that my parents were actually driving into Austin to spend the Christmas holidays with us. I actually got to show my Mom and Dad a bit about the brewing process.
Once again, here's the brew setup. No football on TV this time, so I had to settle for some Top Gear on Netflix ;-)
The most notable aspect of this brew is that, for the first time, I used tap water, straight out of my faucet. All of my previous beers have used purified, bottled, spring water. This might be a short-lived experiment, if there are any strange flavors to this beer, as everything I've brewed from bottled water has come out quite nicely. But buying bottled water is expensive, and takes some additional time (and forethought)!
This beer had a ton of sugar, and called for double pitching the yeast (twice as much). This should be a very big beer, probably close to 9%.
After 6 days in primary fermentation, I racked this beer into a newly acquired plastic fermenter (my second fermenter). However, I really had a hell of a time getting the plastic lid to fit on it. All in all, I regretted this bucket fermenter. Thankfully, the good people at Austin Homebrew accepted it as a return and I applied the value to a second glass carboy. I'm much, much, much happier with that!
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