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[Review] Brewer's Choice Ultimate Scottish 80 Shilling Kit

Started by Garry, October 13, 2013, 03:22:37 PM

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Garry

The club were generously given this kit compliments of HomeBrewWest to review.

It's a Brewer's Choice Ultimate Scottish 80 Shilling.

The kit comes in a very useful 5L bucket and contains a large 2.6kg bag of DME. In this kit it looks like a dark DME. You also get 3 teabags. One containing 25g of steeping grain. The grains look dark and smell choclately / roasty. You get 2 hop teabags. A 10g and 25g bag. I don't know what hops are but the label on the bucket mentions fuggles!



The first job is to clean an sanitize the bucket. Put the teabags in the bucket and cover with 3L of boiling water. Cover the bucket and let it steep for 20 min.







Pour the "tea" into a sanitized fermentor and steep the tea bags 2 more times for 20min in 3L of boiling water each time.

Next add the DME to the fermentor and stir until all the clumps are dissolved.





Now top up the fermentor with cold water to the 23L mark.





The temperature should be between 20-25°C before pitching the yeast. Mine was a little high so I left the FV outside the back door to let it cool while I tidied up. I eventually got it down to 24°C and stirred the wort vigorously to aerate it. Then sprinkled the yeast onto the foam head.







The OG was 1.042. It's supposed to ferment out to 3.7%ABV.

There is a bit of waiting around when doing these kits but I used this to my advantage. I managed to get another brew bottled before I started the 3rd steep, so a good mornings work done.

A word of caution when handling the teabags, they are very delicate. I managed to burst one of the hop bags trying to fish it out of the FV. I ended up putting all the teabags into one of my own hop bags for the next 2 steeps.

It's also difficult to get the wort temperature down to pitching temp because you are adding 9L of boiling water to the FV. It would help if you had 4 or 5 litres of water in the freezer before hand and used this to top up the FV.

The wort smells nice and malty in the end. There's also a bit of a hop tea taste off it. I'm looking forward to trying this one in a month or so. I expect it to be tasty  :)



LordEoin

It looks like you had the same problems as I did.. 1)too much hot water for the right pitching temp and 2)week teabags.
Otherwise they seem to be a great piece of kit.

I like how you used the bucket for the steeps ;)

Garry

I bottled this tonight. It finished at 1.010 so I should get 4.2%abv.

The cold weather has cleared it nicely and it's a nice dark brown colour. No hop aroma and the taste at the moment is malty/sweet. Not much bitterness, it's on the malty side of the hop/malt balance. I think the carbonation will add an extra dimension to it though so I'll report back in a couple of weeks.

I carbed it to 2.0 vols  :o

LordEoin

I have the all-grain version of this sitting dry in my kitchen for my next brew, looking forward to doing tasting both :)

Greg2013

Garry how did this turn out ? Looking at getting one of these kits for brewing over the holidays.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."  Gen. James 'Mad Dog' Mattis USMC(Ret.)

Garry

Quote from: Greg2013 on December 19, 2013, 04:05:01 AM
Garry how did this turn out ? Looking at getting one of these kits for brewing over the holidays.

I wouldn't have been familiar with the Scottish 80 Shilling style so I bought a bottle of Caledonian 80 to compare them. This kit tastes very similar. There's a malty aroma but no hop aroma. The body is light for such a dark ale. It's got a nice sweetness almost like raisins and a bit of caramel. A little bit of bitterness in the finish but not much.

The biggest difference between the beer I brewed and the commercial one was the colour. Mine is very dark, it almost looks like a stout until you raise it to the light. Then you can see a bit of red in the colour. The commercial one has a much lighter colour, like a copper brown.

Overall, a fine beer  :)

Greg, PM me your parcel motel ID and I'll send you a bottle  :) You can decide for yourself?

Garry

Quote from: iTube on December 19, 2013, 10:21:53 AM
That Caledonian 80/- isn't great, imho. I'm not sure if it's a good example of the style, but I found it fairly weak and thin.

I must see if I can get some other examples in the off licence and educate myself!

Greg2013

Thanks Garry will do, any of the other ones you would reccommend in the meantime as well? I really need to get a couple of brews down next week. Will pm you later,cheers.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."  Gen. James 'Mad Dog' Mattis USMC(Ret.)

Garry

Quote from: Greg2013 on December 19, 2013, 10:34:58 AM
any of the other ones you would reccommend in the meantime as well?

I assume it's the "brewers choice ultimate" kits you're looking at? This is the only one I've done myself.

I tasted LordEoin's pilsner kit. It was nice but it didn't taste like a pilsner. It had a yeasty aroma like a wheat beer. I'm sure that kit came with a proper lager yeast. The cold temps at the moment would be good for that.

LordEoin also did the IPA kit. I didn't taste that one but he was raving about it one night!

Quote from: LordEoin on September 23, 2013, 11:52:22 PM
  • Brupaks Brewer's Choice Ultimate Traditional IPA, by LordEoin - Click Here
  • Brupaks Brewer's Choice Ultimate Czech Pilsner, by LordEoin - Click Here

LordEoin

The IPA went down a treat, although more labelled as an American Pale Ale.
These Ultimate kits seem to have a bit of an identity crisis, but make tasty beer if you're not too fussed about being totally true to style.
Stick in a bit of a dryhop to get your money's worth ;)

mr hoppy

Quote from: Garry on December 19, 2013, 10:30:14 AM
Quote from: iTube on December 19, 2013, 10:21:53 AM
That Caledonian 80/- isn't great, imho. I'm not sure if it's a good example of the style, but I found it fairly weak and thin.

I must see if I can get some other examples in the off licence and educate myself!

They've got some Traquair house beers in Bradley and they are firkin awesome examples of Scotch ales, especially the Traquair House Ale. Fantastic, perfect for Christmas dinner really - not much hops though.

Garry

Thanks Mr. H. I must call into Bradley's for a look at that. I might leave it 'til after the Christmas rush though (I'm more of a sniper shopper myself  :P)

You seem to know your Scottish ales? I'll try hold onto a bottle for you to get your opinion.

johnrm

I'll pop in myself, not had these and need to explore the style. Thanks

mr hoppy

Just remember (in BCJP terms) there's 2 styles Scottish ales and Scotch ales.

Strange thing is a lot of bigger Belgian beers are bastardized Scotch ales.

LordEoin

I tried this tonight and it's a nice beer.

Strangely, it tastes nothing like the Brupaks 80 shilling mashkit, more like the Brewer's choice Ultimate IPA.
It's also far darker than the mashkit and has a much lighter taste.