Northern_Brewer
British - apparently some US company stole my name
Apologies - if you see eg Ratebeer you'll see that this is a US version, the Scottish Ale in Europe has historically been the bottled version of the 3.9% 80/-.
It looks like the latest rebrand has followed the Guinness model of introducing the export version to the home market as a premium "craft" product, I should have worked out that it had changed seeing a bottle labelled as 80/- but the Scottish Ale is tucked away at the bottom of their "craft" page.
But it does mean that on an international forum many people who see the phrase "Belhaven Scottish Ale" will assume you're talking about the bottled version of 80/- because the 5.2% beer just isn't really known in the UK, and there's lots of British clone recipes for 80/-. Comparing Scottish Ale with 80/- you've got 5.0% ABV in keg, 5.2% in bottle, 100% Scottish pale malt, 21 IBU of Challenger and Goldings in the former, compared to 3.9%, pale and black, and 25 IBU of Challenger, Goldings and Fuggles in the latter.
Since the late 19th century Scottish brewers have been quick to use caramel for colour and sugars, so it looks like the "Deep ruby" 5.0% is being coloured with caramel or maybe something like invert no 4, I'd have thought it's likely that there's sugar in there somewhere.
I guess the hopping is essentially the same as the 80/- clones, just without the Fuggles because foreigners think that Scottish beers aren't as hoppy as what is actually drunk in Scotland. Scottish beers seem to have suffered more than most in the 20th century from the triple threats of accountants, pasteurisation and wartime, which left Scottish beer unrecognisable from the 60+ IBU hop monsters of the 19th century. But that's a rant for another time....
It looks like the latest rebrand has followed the Guinness model of introducing the export version to the home market as a premium "craft" product, I should have worked out that it had changed seeing a bottle labelled as 80/- but the Scottish Ale is tucked away at the bottom of their "craft" page.
But it does mean that on an international forum many people who see the phrase "Belhaven Scottish Ale" will assume you're talking about the bottled version of 80/- because the 5.2% beer just isn't really known in the UK, and there's lots of British clone recipes for 80/-. Comparing Scottish Ale with 80/- you've got 5.0% ABV in keg, 5.2% in bottle, 100% Scottish pale malt, 21 IBU of Challenger and Goldings in the former, compared to 3.9%, pale and black, and 25 IBU of Challenger, Goldings and Fuggles in the latter.
Since the late 19th century Scottish brewers have been quick to use caramel for colour and sugars, so it looks like the "Deep ruby" 5.0% is being coloured with caramel or maybe something like invert no 4, I'd have thought it's likely that there's sugar in there somewhere.
I guess the hopping is essentially the same as the 80/- clones, just without the Fuggles because foreigners think that Scottish beers aren't as hoppy as what is actually drunk in Scotland. Scottish beers seem to have suffered more than most in the 20th century from the triple threats of accountants, pasteurisation and wartime, which left Scottish beer unrecognisable from the 60+ IBU hop monsters of the 19th century. But that's a rant for another time....
