Martin Joiner’s Blog Confessions of a binge thinker

Brewmaster Scottish Heavy – 2nd attempt home brew success

I am very chuffed to announce that my second attempt at home-brewing beer is a success. By that I mean I could comfortably drink this until I was drunk! The flavour is almost as good as the professionally brewed stuff that you pay over £3 a bottle for in the supermarkets. But of course this only cost me 30 pence a bottle.

So what did I do differently this time to make it work so much better than the first batch?

1. Bought a bottle brush to really scrub the inside wall of the bottles with steriliser before bottling
2. Used only brown bottles to filter sunlight
3. Brewed in a dark place (my bathroom cupboard)
4. Was very VERY careful not to stir up sediment during any stage of brewing
5. Used a method called secondary fermentation (after the initial 4 days of vigorous fermentation I transferred the beer into a fresh container to complete the process, thus separating the beer from the nasty tasting sediment)
6. Put less sugar in the bottles at bottling

Now I cannot say for sure which of these things accounted for the sudden leap in quality but I think No. 4 was the most important thing. With my first batch I made the rookie error of stirring the beer a couple of days before bottling, mistakenly thinking this would encourage the brewing process. I was wrong, it tainted the beer with a horrible bitter taste and meant most of my first batch went down the drain.

Tasting Session

The beer is nicely carbonated, that is to say it doesn't blow off your sinuses with fizz like some homebrews but it's got enough to compliment the texture which is thin not caramelised. The flavour is earthy but light with a hint of metallic taste similar to stout. Just the right amount of bitterness for my taste, comparable with Newcastle Brown Ale. As for potency it lives up to it's reputation. The term Heavy is an everyday term for the Scots, so my Glaswegian flatmate informs me. One of it's key selling points being that it gets you drunk. During the time it's taken me to write this blog I am already mis-typing words and losing concentration.