Scotch Ale and Carmelization in the Kettle

[ZenBrew]

I am working on honing in my scotch ale recipe. I read that the Scotts would not use cyrstal malts to obtain carmel flavors. Instead they would camelize in the kettle (boil kettle I think) to obtain a maltier camelization.

I don't understand how to obtain carmelization in the kettle when I do all grain. Does anyone else understand how this is achieved? I still think I will use crystal malts but wild like to explore carmelization in the boil kettle.

 

[blizz81]

Some guys do crazy-long boils with large starting volumes for this. When we did a wee heavy recently, we aimed to reduce the first gallon of runnings on the stove down to 1 quart while we continued to run off and sparge, etc. Unfortunately we should have used a larger pot and ended up only boiling down about half.


We were fighting a mash tun that lost quite a bit of temp over the course of the mash and all our beers on it finished dry, and the WH was a bit more dry than I wanted, not terrible - I think something like 1.012 or 1.014, I'd have to check at home. So hard to say about the end result (I was hoping for a bit more sweetness from the "carmelization" / maillard), but you might try the 1gal -> 1qt thing as a start and see how it works.

 

[duboman]

You don't have to caramelize the entire batch, pull a gallon of wort with your runnings and boil it down on a separate burner, at least to half, add it back to the boil and that should work for a 5 gallon batch. If you are looking for more then boil the pull longer or add another half gallon and boil it down.

 

[WayFrae]

Yes, I actually just watched a video with Drew Beechum that mentioned doing this. He said for his favorite Wee Heavy recipe, he takes 1.5 gallons of the wort and boils it down to a quart then adds that to the regular boil.

 

[Wolfbrau]

duboman nailed it. Do a 90 minute mash at a high temperature, say 158, and pull a gallon or two 60 minutes in. Boil the crap out of it. It will seriously decrease in volume. Works great. Make sure to adjust your sparge volume accordingly.

Also, a neat-o trick is to add a couple ounces of Melanoidin or Aromatic malt.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

On my last Scottish I lit my BK just as I cracked the valve on my mash tun, and got the first few pints boiling right away, showing the run off to a trickle for about 20 minutes to get some good kettle caramelization.

 

[ZenBrew]

Awesome. I'm wondering if I should drop my crystal malts or tone them down if do this.

Will the kettle carmelization plus 1.5 lbs cyrstal 40 and 1.5 crystal 60 in a 18.5 lbs gain bill be too much carmelization?

 

[Black Island Brewer]

With enough kettle caramelization, you could drop the crystals all together. I used a quarter pound of 40 and the same of 120 as "insurance" in a 5 gallon batch. I'll skip it next time, and let my nose tell me when to resume the run off.

 

[Calichusetts]

I do this often with other types of styles, smash beers work well with this if you want some caramel/sweetness and complexity at no real effort.

I pull the first and last of the runnings and toss it in a sauce pan. Its pure caramel syrup in about 20-30 minutes. Be careful. The color will darken considerably and quickly once you get to the syrup and it can be a pain to get it all out.