Heather Ale

The Plan:
Not sure where I heard about Heather Ale's first - Sacred & Herbal Healing Beers, or through my wife's Scottish roots. Either way, I stumbled on Fraoch last fall and really dug it. Was going to brew one last year, but for some reason decided to wait and brew one at the end of this summer to have for the fall... and for the Quechee Scottish Festival! The biggest issue with this beer is sourcing the heather. The Fraoch recipe calls for 1.25# of heather blossoms. I only have access to dried heather tips. I know that the blossoms would probably taste a heck of a lot better... but I decided to go with the dried ones for now until I can source some fresh ones.


Check out this YouTube video about the brewing process of Fraoch:




THE RECIPE:
10# UK Pale Malt
1# Crystal 60L
1# Biscuit
1/2 oz Cascade (6%)(90)
1/2 oz EKG (15)
8 oz Dried Heather Tips
1 oz Sweet Gale
Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale


8/1 BREWDAY:
Mash - 15 qts @ 153F for 90 min.
(No mashout) Collected
Sparge -
Collected
Pre-boil gravity: Brix 13/1.053
Boil: 90 minutes, with the following additions:
@90 - 4 oz. heather, 1 oz. sweet gale, 1/2 oz. Cascade
@15 - 1oz. heather, 1/2 oz. EKg, 1 tsp Irish moss
@5 - 1 oz. heather
@flameout - steep 1 -oz. heather for 1 hr.
Collected 5.0 gallons
SG = 14.2/1.057

8/22 BOTTLING:
FG: 7/1.010
I was in a bit of a rush to get these ready for the Quechee festival... I really should have transferred this to secondary and let it rest for another week... and I really should have had some more conditioning time under it's belt because it wasn't ready on the 28th like I had hoped.
With some help from Jen, we bottled 24 22 oz bottles and 14 12 oz. bottles.

Water Woes

Damn damn double damn... I've screwed myself.

Last summer & fall, I used spring water for all of my homebrews. Then I started boiling 7 or 8 gallons of tap water the night before, and letting it sit overnight to cool. Both of these worked well... the spring water beers definitely were the best of all of them, that could just be coincidence, or it could be factual.

Recently I started all grain brewing... and for some lazy-ass reason, I used tap water. I've now noticed that my chocolate stout, dunkelweizen, AND brown ale all have the same bitter taste to them. Unfortunately, the last batch I did, the brown rice lager, also used tap water. Well... never again. I'm either going back to boiling it the night before or just ponying up the $ to buy spring water each time.

Having the right water really does make an enormous difference... go figure, your beer is mostly water in the end, so it really should be one of the most important ingredients.