Wee Heavy Advice

I have an recipe for a Scottish Export (OG = 1.047) and I am thinking of making a Wee Heavy. The Export recipe has been tweaked over time to its current incarnation and placed in a contest last year:

8.5 lbs 2-row Pale malt
1 lb Aromatic Malt
8 oz Crystal 60
4 oz Special B Malt
1.5 oz Roasted Barley

.25 oz Pacific Gem 13.6% AA, full boil
.25 oz Pacific Gem 13.6% AA, 20 minutes
.5 oz East Kent Goldings 4.8% AA, 20 minutes

I was wondering if I wanted to make this into a Wee Heavy near the low end of the scale, OG = 1.075 or 60% higher than my Export recipe, would it be appropriate to just add an extra 60% of all of the ingredients (keeping their same relative percentage of the recipe) or should certain ingredients not be raised as much (and if not, why)?

Bearcat Brewmeister said:

I have an recipe for a Scottish Export (OG = 1.047) and I am thinking of making a Wee Heavy. The Export recipe has been tweaked over time to its current incarnation and placed in a contest last year:

8.5 lbs 2-row Pale malt
1 lb Aromatic Malt
8 oz Crystal 60
4 oz Special B Malt
1.5 oz Roasted Barley

.25 oz Pacific Gem 13.6% AA, full boil
.25 oz Pacific Gem 13.6% AA, 20 minutes
.5 oz East Kent Goldings 4.8% AA, 20 minutes

I was wondering if I wanted to make this into a Wee Heavy near the low end of the scale, OG = 1.075 or 60% higher than my Export recipe, would it be appropriate to just add an extra 60% of all of the ingredients (keeping their same relative percentage of the recipe) or should certain ingredients not be raised as much (and if not, why)?

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I think you could just up everything by 60%. I'd also add a very small amount (3 or 4 oz) of scottish peated malt.

There is a podcast on Scottish Ales by Jamil at : http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/jamil.php

He uses a base recipe with specialty grains and makes everything from a 60 shilling to wee heavy with the same amount of specialty grains and only increases the 2 row to increase the gravity.

Thanks for the link. I will definitely listen later and post my thoughts.

Funny thing I saw on his site was the May 7 podcast on Specialty Beers and a Black Forest Stout. I made a chocolate cherry stout I called Black Forest Stout about 6 years ago. Sweet stout with 1 pound of Giardelli's cocoa powder and 15 pounds of cherries. It ended up with a pink head that freaked people out, but it tasted awesome. I was actually thinking of recreating it for a competition coming up and now everyone will think I'm copying him.

Any other advice on the Wee Heavy?

I listened to the podcast and Jamil of course makes several good points. He has me convinced to not add the peated malt back in. In his recipe he has a surprisingly low 60% of the grain bill coming from pale malt for Scottish 60- at 1.034. If I increase the pale malt of his recipe to get the OG to 1.075, then the pale malt would be at 81.4% of the bill, virtually identical to the 82.2% in my 80- recipe, so I guess I should ramp all of mine up in proportion to maintain that.

He also had an interesting comment on the use of Pale Chocolate malt to provide a bit of roastiness. I use the standard roasted barley, but one of the comments I got on my 80- at the last competition was that it finished a bit too crispy. I wonder if substituting pale chocolate for roasted barley would help that. I have never used it in any recipe. Does anyone have experience with it and specifically, using it as a substitute for roasted barley and its effect on a dry finish?

When they said "crispy" did they mean too roasty/astringent from grain or dry?

I have yet to drink a finished product with the pale chocolate (I have 3 Scottish 60/- in various stages of fermentation/conditioning) but just nibbling the grain I can tell you there is a huge differnce between it and roast barley. The pale chocolate tastes like medium done toast.

Well, I did look at the other score sheet and it said malty with carmel and toffee flavors and a dry finish. What would cause the dry finish? For the record, I mashed at 156F and use WLP002 since it is even less attenuative than WLP028. I attempted to ferment at 65F but was closer to 68F due to summer weather. OG was only 1.045 for this particular batch and FG was 1.013. IBUs were 24 (maybe a bit high but well within the 15-30 for style), and although they said good carbonation, I thought it was perhaps a bit high for the style.