My First Recipe Attempt - Scottish Ale

Hi everyone. A local home brew contest has given me the kick in the butt needed to try creating my own recipes... Time to dive in head first! I'm looking at doing a Scottish Export 80 type beer. I'm going to do a 2.5 gallon test batch to start... Here's what I've got so far, I'm just looking for comments to see if I'm on the right track. Looking for something malty, with a hint of smokyness and a slight sweetness from the honey. I have exactly 6 week to do a test batch as well as the final batch for the competition, so please keep that in mind.

Steeping Grains (30 min at 150 degrees)

12oz Munich Malt
8oz Vienna Malt
8oz British Crystal 50-60L
4oz Wheat Malt
4oz Smoked Malt
2oz Roasted Barley

60 minute boil, 1lb 0oz Light Dry Malt Extract added at the start of the boil. I'll add 0.5 oz of Goldings hops for the full 60 minute boil time. Will probably use Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale Yeast.

Again, I'm thinking of using honey to sweeten it up. How much and when should I add this?

I guess I'm looking for thoughts on if this will fit into that Scottish Export 80 category. I used the beer calculus website to get an idea of my OG and FG numbers and I'm around 1.047 and 1.014. Any comments welcome! Wish me luck :rockin:

I'm no expert in the Scot Ale cat. But here's my concern. Honey is a fermentable sugar, so how are you going to prevent it from fermenting?

Warped04 said:

I'm no expert in the Scot Ale cat. But here's my concern. Honey is a fermentable sugar, so how are you going to prevent it from fermenting?

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Exactly, adding honey will lead to a drier finished beer (unless you add it to the glass when serving, or kill the yeast with heat/chemicals/filter before adding) since it is nearly 100% fermentable.

If you want sweetnes you can add more crystal malt, mash hotter, or add an unfermentable sugar like malto-dextrin or lactose.

Oldsock said:

Exactly, adding honey will lead to a drier finished beer (unless you add it to the glass when serving, or kill the yeast with heat/chemicals/filter before adding) since it is nearly 100% fermentable.

If you want sweetnes you can add more crystal malt, mash hotter, or add an unfermentable sugar like malto-dextrin or lactose.

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Thanks for info. I'm moving away from adding honey, looking at adding a honey malt instead. I'll probably mash a bit hotter to get a bit more sweetness. Thanks!

EDIT: I guess you replied above while I was typing this!! Munich and Vienna need to be mashed, not just steeped. You should consider your steep as a mini-mash, temperature control during this part is key. For a scottish ale, mashing at 150F will leave the beer too thin and dry. Up your temperature to 155-156 and hold it for an hour.

The above posters are correct about honey, it will add zero sweetness and will ferment out almost completely. The last scottish I made was almost 20% crystal malt of varying degrees and it has that nice somewhat sweet finish that you're looking for.

As for the smoked malt, this is taken directly from the BJCP style description for this category (my emphasis added):
" Although unusual, any smoked character is yeast- or water-derived and not from the use of peat-smoked malts. Use of peat-smoked malt to replicate the peaty character should be restrained; overly smoky beers should be entered in the Other Smoked Beer category (22B) rather than here."

Everything I've read and heard seems to indicate that the use of smoked malt in this style is an invention of the American Homebrewer and that if you travel to Scotland you wont find them using any peat smoked malt in these beers. According to the way the style guidelines read, if you are brewing this for competition I would leave out the smoked malt and just let the Scottish yeast strain do it's thing.

strat_thru_marshall said:

EDIT: I guess you replied above while I was typing this!! Munich and Vienna need to be mashed, not just steeped. You should consider your steep as a mini-mash, temperature control during this part is key. For a scottish ale, mashing at 150F will leave the beer too thin and dry. Up your temperature to 155-156 and hold it for an hour.

The above posters are correct about honey, it will add zero sweetness and will ferment out almost completely. The last scottish I made was almost 20% crystal malt of varying degrees and it has that nice somewhat sweet finish that you're looking for.

As for the smoked malt, this is taken directly from the BJCP style description for this category (my emphasis added):
" Although unusual, any smoked character is yeast- or water-derived and not from the use of peat-smoked malts. Use of peat-smoked malt to replicate the peaty character should be restrained; overly smoky beers should be entered in the Other Smoked Beer category (22B) rather than here."

Everything I've read and heard seems to indicate that the use of smoked malt in this style is an invention of the American Homebrewer and that if you travel to Scotland you wont find them using any peat smoked malt in these beers. According to the way the style guidelines read, if you are brewing this for competition I would leave out the smoked malt and just let the Scottish yeast strain do it's thing.

Click to expand...

Again, thanks for the info! I've got lots to learn...

The term mini mash scares me... I've only done steeping with extract so far. What will I need to do differently? I'm trying to keep this first attempt at recipe creation as simple as possible.

After considerable research using the wonderful search function, and the comments in this thread, I've tweaked my recipe considerably! Here is I've come up with for a 2.5 gallon batch.

14 oz British Crystal
6 oz Wheat Malt
4 oz honey malt
1 oz roasted barley

1 lb Light dry malt extract

1 lb Munich Liquid malt

Steep at 155 to 160 for about an hour. Boil for 60 min, 0.5 oz Goldings hops added at the start of the boil. I'm feeling pretty good about this. Anxious to try it!