Strong Scotch Ale with buckwheat honey

Hi,

At my university, we have a 3.5 barrels system. For the next brew, I consider brewing a strong scotch ale with buckwheat honey. I also want to make a long boil of 4 hours to get lot of kettle caramelization. I'd like your opinion on the recipe because theres lot of things I never tried in this project. Here's the recipe

9-E Strong Scotch Ale



Volumer: 347,55 L
Efficience: 90,0%
Atténuation: 68,0%
Calories: 308,2 kcal per 12,0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1,091 (1,070 - 1,130)
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FG: 1,029 (1,018 - 1,056)
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Color: 18,38 (14,0 - 25,0)
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Alcool: 8,18% (6,5% - 10,0%)
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IBU: 30,8 (17,0 - 35,0)
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Ingrédients:
80,0 kg Pilsner Malt 64.5%
10,0 kg Munich TYPE II 8.1%
8,0 kg Honey Malt 6.5%
8,0 kg Aromatic Malt (Amber 50) 6.5%
2,0 kg Wheat Malt 1.6%
2,0 kg Chocolate Malt 1.6%
14,0 kg Buckwheat Honey - Boiling time 5min 11.3%
950,0 g Tettnanger (4,5%) - Boiling time 60,0 min

I know I should use pale ale for base but for some reasons we have 80 KG of Pilsner malt that we need to use before xmas

What's your opinion on the recipe? I never made a Scotch ale and I never dealt with so much caramelization.

I learned to hombrew in a class at college, but we certainly didn't have a sweet system like that!

Have you used buckwheat honey before? It is very potent, we just used 3% in a dark saison, and even that may have been too much. It gives a strong earthy/musty aroma to the beer that can be overwhelming. I’d probably cut it down and use another milder honey for the rest of the addition.

Otherwise looks like a fine recipe, although I’d swap out some of the aromatic and honey for some medium-dark crystal malt to add some more sweetness (to balance out the drying honey) and add some darker fruit/caramel flavors.

Good luck.

Thank you for your response. It's the first time I use honey of any kind. What if I boil most of the buckwheat honey longer(like 30 min) and keep the final addition to 2%. Do you think the flavor would mellow? When did you add it when you brewed your dark saison? We already bought it, so we would like to not buy more.

We added it a minute or two into the chill, so that certainly will protect the aroma more than adding it during the boil. I've never added honey to the boil, so I'm not sure how quickly the aromatics will be driven off. That wasn't much help at all, hopefully someone else has some experience.

You might try boiling some of the honey for 30 minutes in some water and comparing it to some shorter boiled samples (controlling for dilution) to get an idea of what it will do.