A Must Make Scottish Beer

My mindset has changed and now, it is time to start thinking about good early fall beers.  I mean we’re in August already!  This beer should be perfect for those nice cooler days to come.

This recipe is a recipe that I always seem to make once this time of year comes around.  It’s just a great recipe to refresh you when those nights are no longer 85 degrees out.  The recipe is a Scottish Ale recipe.  For those that haven’t made a Scottish Ale before, this style of beer has an, “earthy” flavors from the hops.  They are generally lighter beers to drink and are brown in color, unless you make a “Scotch Wee Heavy”.

When it comes to beer, these styles of beer (Irish, British, Scottish) are really where I thrive, I enjoy making these styles.  In general you’ll see that those styles have a simplistic approach for hop infusions as well as grains that are in the recipe.  Maybe the reason why I enjoy these beers so much is because I view brewing very much like cooking, less is more.   Trust me when I say, you won’t find anything to complicated about this beer. For all-grain brewers check out our conversion chart and us M.O for the grain.

Scottish 80L

Ingredients

8 oz 60L

2 oz Black patent

7.25 lbs Golden Light LME

1.5 oz Fuggle (60min)

.5 oz Fuggle (10min)

.5 oz East Kent Goldings (10min)

WLP 028

OG: 1.053

FGL 1.014

SRM: 15

IBU: 29.6

ABV: 5.1%

Directions:

• Heat 2.5 gallons of water up to 150 degrees
• Take grains, put in steeping bag and steep for 30 minutes
• Pull grains out, don’t ring bag – discard bag.
• Add malt extract, bring to boil
• In begining of the boil add 1.5 oz Fuggle hops
• Boil for 50 min
• Add .5 oz Fuggle Hops and .5 oz East Kent Golding hops.
• Boil for 10 min
• End boil, cool down, put in fermenter, fill up to 5 gallons and pitch yeast

Ferment it in Primary for 7-14 days

Bottle and let it sit in bottle for 21 days.

Conclusion

This beer has those earthy hops that I love, Goldings and Fuggles.  The black pat changes the flavor just a bit, but at such a low amount it really doesn’t take over the beer.  With the crystal malt added to the beer, it makes it a bit darker as well as beefs up the sweetness.  Overall this is a really good well-balanced beer.  If you wanted to have a smokey flavor to it, I would add 1-2 oz of Peated smoked malt to it.  Don’t go higher than 4 oz of peated smoke malt, it’s a malt that a little goes a long way.

Hope you enjoy!

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