Scottish Ale recipe from this?

[PSmurf78]

Hi everyone,
I've got the following ingredients for a scottish ale, but I'm not sure about all what to use.

6 lbs light DME
2 lbs amber DME
2 lbs dark DME
1 lb peat smoked
1 lb honey malt
10 lbs pilsner
2 lbs crystal 60L

2 oz of Sterling
2 oz of Willamette

I'm hoping to make something that's a little darker, a little stronger that will age decently. I'm thinking of using all of the light DME and the the dark DME. Plus 1/2 lb of the peat and a 1/2 lb of the honey steeped with maybe the 2 lbs of the crystal 60L.

I plan to use all the hops, and probably the Wyeast scottish ale strand, unless someone else has a suggestion.

What do you think?

 

[Bob]

Please please please don't use peated malt. It's not whiskey; it's Scotch Ale.

I started plugging things into The Beer Recipator. If you use the light, dark and one pound of the amber DME and one pound of the Crystal 60, that'll put you at OG ~1.084, SRM 23. Using 2 oz of Willamette at 5% and 1 oz of Sterling at 6% puts you at ~25IBU, depending on the gravity of your boil, if boiled for 60 minutes.

23 SRM is the high end of the color scale for the style, and 1.084 is the high end of the gravity scale.

IBU will depend on how much you boil for how long in what amount of what gravity wort. Got that straight?

Cheers!

Bob

 

[PSmurf78]

Does the peat flavor really come out? If/When would you ever use it?

 

[jma99]

I like a bit of peat in my 80 shilling ale.

But, for gods sake don't use more than a couple of ounces for a 5 gal batch!

1 once is plenty!

 

[PSmurf78]

Interesting... I didn't know it was so strong. Does it have a strong smell/taste to it in the raw form?

 

[Bob]

Oh, yeah. A little goes a long way.

I wouldn't use it in beer, ever. Someone leapt to an unfortunate conclusion - given that Scotch whiskey is often smoky, earthy and peaty, Scotch ale must be, too! So he searched high and low for peated malt, finally got his LHBS owner to source it from a distillery in Scotland, and a fad was born. Now everyone carries it. Never mind that it's historically indefensible.

It's like oak in IPA. I can definitively prove that the historical justification for oaking IPA is completely wrong. But that doesn't stop people from assuming that oak casks in history were all exactly like the ones you get at LHBS. And if all casks are/were plain wood, that means oak flavor in the beer! Someone hand me some sawdust!

And then enough guys cry about getting dinked in competitions for these inappropriate flavors, so they change the style sheets to add peat smoke and oak. Which then becomes more ammunition for the underinformed to justify their use of inappropriate ingredients.

Nice vicious circle, innit?



You want to brew Scottish Ale of any type, you can't do better than Noonan's Scotch Ale, in the Classic Styles series. It's the straight dope, daddy-o.

Bob

P.S. Plus I just can't stand the flavor in beer. Weird. I adore whiskies like Laphroig, which are brimming with peat. But not in my beer, please.

 

[PSmurf78]

And that's why I love this site, info like that. It's fun to learn from such knowledgeable home brewers.