drengel said:
what is the line the beer has to cross to become a 'scotch' ale. i assume these are bigger than a 120 shilling but i'm having trouble figuring out the difference. the old chubb weighs in at almost 9% abv--would that be a scotch ale, or a wee heavy, or what...its just listed as a scottish ale.
Referencing
Designing Great Beers with some condensing of numbers:
Light Scottish (60/-): OG 1.033 / 3.5% ABV
Heavy Scottish (70/-): OG 1.037 / 4% ABV
Export Scottish (80/-): OG 1.045 / 4.5% ABV
Strong Scottish (90/-): OG 1.080 / 7% ABV
Scotch (100-120/-): OG 1.086 / 9% ABV
Scotch (140-160/-): OG 1.239 / 9.3% ABV
At 9%, you're in the Scotch range.
This book describes them (Scottish and Scotch ales) as being very similar in brewing process. The main difference seems to be in the flavor profiles. Specifically:
Scottish: little or no hop profile, low-to-med esters, low-to-med diacetyl
Scotch: low-to-med hop profile, medium esters, med-to-high diacetyl
Also, if I read this correctly, the smokey character is something that belongs in a Scottish ale, but not a Scotch ale (probably because Scotch ale is a Belgian thing and uses a different yeast than the scottish... the smokey taste is spposed to come from the yeast and not the use of smoked malts.)
-walker