NB Scottish 60 Schilling with 3 lbs of Mesquite Honey

I'm planning on doing the Northern Brewer's Scottish 60 Schilling which I've brewed before and loved.....but this time I'm thinking of doing it with 3 lbs of Mesquite Honey from Trader Joe's.

Would 3lbs be too much for a 5 gallon batch? Should I use just 1lbs instead?

I'll be using Safale S-04 yeast.

Cheers

Here is the recipe:

O.G: 1.031
READY: 4 WEEKS

KIT INVENTORY:
SPECIALTY GRAIN
-- 0.5 lbs Briess Caramel 80L
FERMENTABLES
-- 3.15 lbs Amber malt syrup
-- 1 lbs Dark dry malt extract
HOPS & FLAVORINGS
-- 1 oz East Kent Goldings (60 min)

I actually just brewed the same recipe but all grain on Tuesday, and just happened to have 1/2 lb of wildflower honey from my last recipe, so I threw that in to bump the ABV a bit.

Since this only has 6 lbs of grain in the AG recipe, it is going to be a very light body, so I wouldn't put 3 lbs of honey in there unless you want a warm alcohol burn that might overwhelm the light body of the beer. 1lb would probably be fine, but 3lbs is way too much. That much highly fermentable honey just isn't going to be in good balance with the relative low amount of grain and hops.

I'm thinking I'll scale it down to just 1lbs. Thanks for the support.

Honey significantly dries out the beer by adding a ton of ferment-ables and very little flavor. Even this might add a tad of smoke flavor to it. IMHO a Scotch ale, be it 30, 60, 90 etc... are suppose to be very sweet, huge body, Smokey finish etc. If you are using the honey to add smoke to it, I would just get some peat smoked malt and add about a pound, 2 if you are feeling really adventurous. If you are adding honey to get the ABV up, I would add more malt, if you are adding honey to get dryness I would wonder if you wanted that for the style.

That being said, if you were to use honey, don't heat it much at all. It will not cause any infection and in fact might start to denigrate and loose very delicate flavor compounds when heated. It won't infect your beer because nothing lives in honey.

I do honey after the boil at the last flameout....

asterix404- I think you are mistaken about the nature of mesquite honey- it is not 'mesquite smoked'- like barbecue- it has nothing to do with smoke- out west, the mesquite tree is abundant and its blossoms provide the pollen (also nectar?) to bees for the production of honey, similar to clover or wildflower blossoms in your area.

FWIW i have used Trader Joe's mesquite honey since 1998 for brewing meads, hard ciders and beers- it is high quality and has a very nice flavor.