Old Chub Clone Recipe
In a previous post, I paired the scotch ale I brewed back in November with two other scotch ales, Old Chub and Scottie Karate. Now that my batch has been bottled and had time to condition, it’s time to pair it off against Old Chub again to see what’s up.
Notes from the tasting (Old Chub on left, Alba Dog on right in these pictures):
- Alba Dog definitely has more body than Old Chub, more carmel notes coming through
- Old Chub is thinner, drier, actually more drinkable than Alba Dog though they’re both roughly 8% ABV. Alba Dog’s OG was 1.o84, meaning that Old Chub’s must be less than that yet almost certainly is fermented out further than the hefty 1.027 FG I was left with for Alba Dog (due I believe mainly to a high mash temp of 158*)
- The hop profile of Old Chub comes across much clearer than Alba Dog’s, especially as the samples begin to warm up towards room temperature. I think this has to do with the fact that I took the extra step of boiling a few gallons of the first runnings down in my 5 gallon brew pot
before adding to the brew kettle. That really lent a carmel flavor to the batch that seems to overpower most everything else. (more…)
Alba Dog
I took last Friday 11/18 off work to burn through another vacation day and brew a beer. This was the first time in a while that I’ve brewed without… purpose. In July, I did two batches of pumpkin ale for Halloween/Thanksgiving, in early October I did a hop harvest beer to try out the hops I grew this past summer, and in early November I did a Belgian honey ale for release after the birth of my daughter in February. The only purpose I had in brewing this Scotch ale was that I FREAKING LOVE SCOTCH ALE. It’s probably my favorite style if I were forced to choose.
I’ve decided to call this batch Alba Dog, not in homage to Jessica Alba so much as that Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. Combine that with “alpha dog” and you get “Alba Dog.”
Using my nifty new iPhone and Brew Pal app., I was able to export the recipe and paste it in here: (more…)