Scotch Ale Bottled

The scotch ale that was brewed on February 11th was officially ready to bottle today. I took a sample with my recently bought sampling thief (an awesome tool to have) and took the final gravity measurement. Our scotch ale had an original gravity of 1.048 and a final gravity of 1.010 leaving the alcohol by volume at a moderate 4.99%. This is exciting to see as the vanilla cream ale I brewed earlier in the month only came out to roughly 2.5% - 3.0% abv using the same strain of yeast. Altogether, the brew finished just under 5 gallons which equates to 45 twelve ounce bottles. Half of a bottle was leftover so I decided to chill it and have a nice, flat scotch ale for tasting. While I'm not ready to offer my full opinion on the brew, at least until the rest have carbonated, I feel it is going to be one of the better brews to date and could become one in the regular rotation. We've included an image of the 5 gallon batch in the carboy pre-bottling.



Also while bottling, I tested a sample of the Muckalee Oatmeal Stout brewed on February 22nd. While the stout was still underfermented by at least a week, the abv is about 5.0% and tasted great. The chocolate and roasted malts were very apparent with the nice mellowing taste of oats on the back end. I'm really excited about this brew and can't wait to bottle this batch.

I'm also including an image of the Apfelwein that we brewed in the middle of January. The batch turned out okay and we would certainly try this again with slightly different techniques. We would certainly use a different strain of yeast like a cider or champagne yeast rather than the lager yeast we did try. Aging seems to help this batch as the month and a half old bottles taste much better and more mellow than the two week old bottles. Enjoy the images and Sláinte!