Scotch ale recipe

as a noob, i am curious about what some of the veterans on this board think about this kit for a Scotch Ale?

Jerry's Scotch Ale Recipe
5 gallons cool water
3 ounces Chocolate malt, crushed
8 ounces Aromatic malt, crushed
1 pound CaraMunich malt, crushed
8 ounces Smokedı
1 Grain bags
1 tsp Gypsum
5 lb Light dry malt extract
3 lb Amber dry malt extract
¼ ounce Vanguard pellet hops (bittering)
¼ ounces Vanguard pellet hops (flavor)
1 tsp Irish Moss
1 Safale S 33 or WLP028 Scotch Ale
5 ounces Priming sugar (1 cup)
Caps
2 packets Sanitizer

Starting gravity: 1.085
Final gravity: 1.018
Final target alc. by vol.: 8% abv

re-post in the recipe threads. you'll probably get better responses there.

smoked malt has no place in a scotch ale. other than that it looks pretty good.

I think people should be free to use smoked malt in a scotch ale if they want. If I were you, I'd try it first without the smoked malt, and then try again with it, to compare.

If you do want to try it, you might want to use a small amount of peat smoked whiskey malt, rather than the German smoked pale malt.

The notion that smoked malt has no place in Scotch ales is a little silly to me. I guess if you want to go by current style guidelines and enter it into a competition as a scotch ale, you should stay away from it, but otherwise there is nothing wrong with it, and in fact you might be making a more historically accurate example. If you look a few centuries back, kilning technology limitations and fuel sources in Scotland were such that imparting some peat flavor into ales was unavoidable. They don't have this flavor very often nowadays, but that doesn't mean you can't make a throwback batch.

So my advise is to try it both ways and brew it how you like it. It's your beer!

I personally don't like a smoked character in my wee heavies. That is simply a matter of personal taste. As said above, a smoky character is historically accurate from before the industrial revolution when peat was used for kilning. There was a resurgence of the use of peat during WWII. Daniels has some nice anecdotes about it in Designing Great Beers.

Yep, I actually first read that passage in DGB last night.

I can't see not putting some smoke in a scotch ale. Peated though. I think that's the key. I always kinda think a little of scotch, as in scotch whiskey, when I drink a scotch ale so I'm looking for a little of that earthy flavor.