Side By Side Comparison - Homebrew Wee Heavy vs. 70 Shilling

These are the same beer, literally the same grain bill. The difference is the 70 Shilling was a second running on the Wee Heavy's mash. I filled my mash tun back up with 168F water and drained it again.

I was going to post my recipe here.  But it looks like when I updated my brewing software, the recipe got corrupted.

But its a fairly standard Wee Heavy recipe for a 7% beer with 8oz of Peated Malt, 8oz of Smoked Malt, plus sitting on oak chips for 3 weeks.

The 70 Shilling is a second running on the first.  It came in at 3%.


I got this idea after reading how beers were made before Porters, using the Parti-Gyle method.  Although I didn't strictly use the Parti-Gyle method with these beers.  What I did was a normal infusion mash on the first running.  On the second, I filled the mash tun back up  with 168F water and drained it again.

Because I used smoked and peated malts and oak chips, the Wee Heavy has a very aggressive flavor. My opinion, smoked & oaked beers go best with a meal. If you drink them on their own, they can be harsh and palate killing.

Because most of the flavor was extracted in the first running, the flavors are more gentle in the 70 Shillling.

The head on the Wee Heavy has much bigger bubbles than the 70 Shilling. The 70 Shilling is fine bubbled and creamy, almost like a nitro beer.

The color is obviously darker on the Wee Heavy for the same reason as the stronger flavor.

A couple items of note on the overall life of these beers. These beers were brewed on 10/29/11 and bottled on 12/04/11.

1) the smoky flavor is more pronounced in the Wee Heavy now than when it was fresh. I attribute this to the other flavors (hops, peat, yeast, grain) mellowing over time. Smoke, it seams, does not mellow.

2) the 70 had a small astringent bite when it was young. Astringency is the classic "bitter beer face". It's a full face gag.

The astringency wasn't powerful, but it is still there. It still exists as a little, almost sour note on the front of the taste. But it aged out considerably on the first 2 months in the bottle. The astringency was most likely caused by extracting tannins in the second running.

There is also another possible explanation for the slight sourness.  I let the mash sit while I boiled the Wee Heavy.  This could have resulted in some souring of the mash between batches.

Conclusions:

1) if you are doing a +7% ABV beer, this is an option worth considering. In you are sub 7%, you may not get enough alcohol out of it to be worth it. I got 42% of the alcohol on the second running. If you're doing a 5.5% beer, that translates to 2.4%.

2) the second beer will be like a "light beer" version of the original beer. Lighter color, alcohol, body, etc.

3) I would call the experiment a success but not an overwhelming success. It's not as good as a beer would be from a fresh grain bill. But this beer only cost me 2oz more of hops to make.

4) I don't know that I will make one of these for every high ABV beer I make, but I will consider doing it again.