The Scottish Brew that must not be named!

[NickK]

Well, I'm not going to recite Blackadder too much

As my own recipe is currently fermenting... I'm thinking (and my original intention for my own recipe is very close but I couldn't get honey malt) of having a stab at a clone of the Scottish brew that is oak aged in old whiskey barrels for 77 days..

Target profile
IBU 25
ABV 6.6%
Taste profile: Warm toffee, caramel, malt, hint of hop bitters mid taste with butterscotch.
Colour: red-brown, clear.
Carbonisation: med-high pressure.

List of ingredients..
70% Golden Promise
15% Honey Malt
15% Caramel Malt
Phoenix Hops
2oz US White Oak cubes
Jim Beam Bourbon ABV 40%
8oz CO2 cartridge
Yeast - unknown, I was thinking WYeast Scottish Ale. Profile - has to be capable of med-high ABV with clean flavour, not too dry and not too fruity. Another option is to work with something like an Irish red..

Preparation of Oak
The oak is pre-soaked in Jim Beam Bourbon for four days whilst covered in the fridge.
I've selected Jim Beam I believe their barrels come from Minnesota rather than Tennessee. I believe Scottish brew barrels come from North Dakota or Minnesota.. it wouldn't surprise me if the barrels came from JB.
Caveats - it may be required to add Bourbon post first ferment or lengthen soaking time.
In addition I've heard their barrels described as both 'lightly toasted' but the US law on bourbon states 'charred'. I'll be using Medium+ toast.

Planned Brew Schedule
This is the planned brew schedule. However tasting should guide the timescale. the only concern is if I'm naturally carbonating then I may need a re-pitch after oaking. I have used forced CO2 carbonisation for my french oak brew and the beer has the same bubble density and size required.

7 days - first fermentation
30 days - oaking (mild priming for CO2 but not for carbonisation)
47 days - primed for carbonisation and conditioning including additional CO2 at 25 days.

So if this is done February then June/July it would be ready.. question is do I run two 15l barrels with different oak/timings/JB added or just go with one 25l barrel.

I'd be very appreciative of any experience of people experimenting to get the right oaking in their brew.

[Barley Water]

Well, I have never made an oak aged beer but here is what I would do (by the way, let me know how your brew turns out, I could easily be conviced to make a bourbon Scotch ale, it sounds great). Brew the beer as normal then run it into a corny keg. Add the oak cubes and cabonate however (either force or naturally). Taste the beer periodically until you get the oak/bourbon flavor you are looking for. Once you get the correct amount of "oaking", jump your beer under pressure to another corney, leaving behind the cubes. Since those little suckers will float, they won't mess up the beer transfer and you should then have a nice keg of beer with just the right amount of oak/bourbon. At that point, you can condition further, bottle with a counter pressure filler or consume.

[NickK]

Well I'm sat here sucking an oak cube, with some Jim Beam and a bottle of the Scottish brew. I've opened a pack as I want to study the effect of Jim Beam on the cubes over the next few days whilst they marinade in the fridge.

Firstly - there's a major link in taste..

1. The American White Oak (medium+ toast) is alot (alot) smoother than the french oak chips I tried. I'm talking about the oak itself. The french oak provided it's oak taste almost as brutally as sucking a lemon. I'm attempting to give you an idea of the level of taste - it's about 40% of the intensity of the french but that's a good thing as you can taste the flavour rather than being brutalised by it. It's very slightly sour too.

2. Jim Beam - wow. You can really taste the oak in it, under pinned with a real sweetness. The smell is there too. Although at 40% it's a bit hard for me.

3. Scottish brew - once I'd been sucking the oak cube again and the Jim Beam had departed I'm sat here tasting the brew. There's a real taste of oak, although I would say in a very similar vein to Jim Beam. However unlike JB it's not sweet. It tasted slightly sour initially then a mass and I mean a mass of dry honey comes through, far more than normal due to the cube before it. The US White Oak cubes I have nail the oaked taste perfectly. There's also slightly malty backbone too.
I think the honey is so dry it provides the sourness in addition to the oak. It could be that the bourbon adds to the sweetness - I'll see over the next few days.

Interesting.

[Bongo]

That's the sort of dedication to the senses i like to hear about fella , i'm glad it went well,you really have to find a balance with oak.

[NickK]

Well just an update (thanks Bongo).

I've just taken off an espresso cup's worth of my current own recipe brew (which is acting as a stake in the ground for the planning of this brew. I've tasted it with both a non-JB soaked cube and a JB soaked cube.

Firstly - barring the use of Goldings and Fuggles in my own recipe (25 IBU) as well as the fact that it's just fresh out of the FV at a mere 5.5% ABV thus hasn't had time to develop tastes.

With the non-soaked, the young-freshness of the hops (without conditioning to smooth it) hits the delicate oak taste hard. Only in the aftertaste can you taste that they stand apart. The honey taste suits the oak, the hop taste when aged a little will be ok although I think the oaking would perhaps work better with less - thus I can see their selection of Phoenix with it's next to zero taste and high bittering offer a way of adding that without hitting the oak.
The scottish brew has a more intense honey flavour so I assume that there is some honey malt or they just use the first 50% of the mash runnings to give that.

With the JB soaked (overnight) is tasted along with the beer there's a real sourness that appears followed by a real belt in the face of hops. So we have our sourness! The hops as I've stated previously are a little overpowering as the brew is a fresh one.

I think once the brew has reached a good 1007 then the dryness of the honey will match that of the scottish brew.

So to summarise progress so far
a) The hops used (Phoenix) have been selected not to hit the taste so hard compared to other varieties of hops.
b) The honey intensity could be provided by either only taking the initial mash runnings without sparging that would lower the taste intensity which means a large grain bill relative to the amount of wort, or, use honey malt.
c) The dryness of the honey is from ending on a low gravity - probably below 1010.
d) the oak taste is more intense that just sucking the cube but this could be down to the time to extract and the amount of oak.

One last point - colour! This is my current brew so far this morning fresh out of the FV after a week.


This is looking good - the depth of colour needs to be slightly more toffee. I would suspect the oak will add some and the more intense use of GP mashing would aid this too.

[NickK]

*ahem* A slight sampler. This is my experimentation brew (ie the fuggles/golding+JB'd oak brew).





This is golden, with slightly more coppering than the espresso cup. The taste has changed alot - for the good!

Firstly the overpowering hops bitterness has dropped, it's alot smoother. The taste is good with the hops, the slight souring of JB/oak with some creamy toffeeness. The warm alcohol background has smoothed too. It's over 6%, that you can feel but not taste! This is really going to be good.. but something to drink slowly..

Compared with the scottish brew - the soured, toffee, slight vanilla is there, the body in terms of alcohol is there but it's lacking the heavy honey and it does have a bittering and taste to it. So I think I'm confirming I'm on the right track! I'll see how the taste with the oak develops further over the next few weeks then I'll leave it be for a while and see what the difference is.

[PaulStat]

Nice to see you stuck with your plans to make an oak aged brew

We'll have to do swapsies

[NickK]

An update on the experimental brew (rather than the proposed brew).

So far:
7 days FV
11 days of Secondary with the lightly presoaked (JB) US Oak.

Just trying a 1/2 pint of this. The head is a persistent 1/2cm. The colour is a lush golden, slightly coppery, colour.

The taste is an immediate hit of bitter sourness (if you were to map the locations of the tongue it hits). The bitterness has mellowed and the sourness is no different from a non-sweetened Jim Beam. There's a taste of the hops too. The after taste is mellow oak with little sourness or bitterness.

I still think there's more that needs to be done to the oak - longer JB soaking, even pre-sweetening the JB before the soak. The chips may require a couple of weeks or a month in soak before using. I might read up on effects of time on taste four whiskey/bourbon once conditioning.

[NickK]

Been slowly sampling this over the period

Now 31 days on (with the cubes still in the keg).. and the experimental beer is a mellow oak tasting beer (needs about 4.5Kg GP malt rather than 2.7 for intensity) but it works very well with a capful of Jim Beam (which will disturb all the purists!).

I think I'll order the summer brew ingredients tomorrow - just hope it arrives for the weekend as I have a free weekend .