Heather Tips

Anyone used heather tips in a beer in place of hops? I'm wanting to try my hand at a version of a pictish ale. Of course, there are no real recipes out there beyond approximate speculation, but I figure it was about time I give it a try. The consensus that I'm seeing says that heather tips should be used sparingly, but there's not much beyond that. Define sparingly. Also, I've been toying with using some peated malt. How much is too much? I'm not new to being inventive or creative with recipes, but I've never used either one of these ingredients. This would be for a 5.5gal batch.

Here's a previous thread on the subject:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/heather-tip-ale-recipe-286652/

As I said in the previous thread, I like a lot of heather flavor so I use 8oz total (2oz of which for "dry heathering") in a standard 5gal Scottish 80- recipe. Most people use less than that I believe.

I'll have to dig a little deeper I suppose to find out what exactly the Pictish ale tasted like. I know it's earthy, but I guess I need to find out if the heather is supposed to be a dominate flavor or a balancing agent. 8oz seems like overkill to me. Wish I had a friggin LHB so I could get a sample of the peated malt and heather and find out more for myself. This brew is going to be more out of curiosity than anything else. I've been building a few recipes for my historical beer series that I want to do and this one is tripping me up a bit since I'm unfamiliar with the ingredients. Glad I found a good deal on Golden Promise though. I have hard water so with the combination of that and golden promise, it's pretty easy to get an approximation of a Scottish beer which will be the foundation of the beer....kinda.

I recently went to a Chili/Beer Comp (not a pairing) and had an English Bitter, the gentleman used hops as you normally would in an English Pale ale, but dry 'hopped' with heather tips. I think he placed 2nd in the comp. The beer was my favorite of the night. I think he said the OG was in the 1.050 neighborhood.