Cream Scotch Ale.

[devinjames]

I thought it would be cool to do strong scotch ale with cream ale yeast. What is the BN expert opinion on this?

Heres the extract recipe I came up with:
7 lb pale liquid extract
2 lb 2-row
0.5 lb aromatic malt
0.5 lb chocolate malt
0.5 lb crystal 80L
0.5 lb carapils
1 oz northern brewer @ 60 min
1 oz fuggles @ 20 min
1 oz fuggles @ 10 min
cream ale yeast (WLP080)

estimated OG: 1.072
estimated FG: 1.016
SRM: 24
34 IBU
7.5% ABV

Comments? Advice?

[devinjames]

bump.

anybody?

[pfooti]

It could be pretty good, although I tend to think of scotch ales as having smoky/phenolic hints that come from the yeast, and that cream ale blend would ferment pretty clean, and might also end up attenuating too high to make it really fit the style. I bet it'd end up somewhat dry, actually. If you're looking for a nice strong brown ale, that looks good, but to be honest feels a bit more like a barleywine than a scotch ale.

The fermentables look pretty good, although depending on how pale the "pale" liquid extract is, I'd consider putting in a bit of crystal 10L or replacing the 2-row minimash with a munich malt. Of course, the aromatic might do the trick there too- I've not used that grain in my own brewing, but it feels like the recipe as-is might be balanced a little too far in the dark grain side, and need a little bit of the low-L caramel. I like my wee heavies to hit many malt notes at the same time. I'm also not a huge fan of chocolate malt in this application, as it can overwhelm other things. Maybe just a smaller amount- even 4 oz would probably be noticeable. Or 2 oz of roast barley.

[devinjames]

I think Ive already given up on the cream ale yeast idea, Ill probably just go with scottish ale yeast. Any others you recommend?

Does the munich malt provide enough enzymes for the starch conversion of the rest of the grains?
I was thinking of adding a few oz of peated/smoked malt and spreading my crystal out to 70 and 10. I guess that also make sense to reduce the amount chocolate malt though I am going for a maple syrup brown kind of color.

[pfooti]

Munich malt, as I understand it, has less diastatic power than 2-row, but still enough to convert the starches in some adjuncts. The caramel malts are already pretty converted, actually just about all the grains in your bill are what I'd call "steepable", with the exception of the aromatic malt.

What I do for my scotch ale is follow Skotrat's Traquair House Ale more-or-less with some modifications. The premise is to start with a lot of base malt, a tiny amount of roast barley (2oz in a 5 gal batch) and that's it. Take a gallon of your wort and boil it down to a cup, return to the regular wort, and do a 2-hour boil on the full wort. That adds a lot of caramelization the old-fashioned way. It's a fantastic beer, although I'm not sure how well it would respond to conversion to an extract recipe.

If you look at Fred Bonjour's Kilt Lifter, you can see the grain bill for a very good strong scotch ale that uses more standard caramel malts instead of kettle caramelization. Full disclosure: I've not brewed this myself, but I've heard great things about it. The basic idea is that if you're going for a real malt rainbow, you should try to get some representation from multiple levels of roast in the bill- some crystal 20 for sweetness and some 80-120 for the more raisin/fig type of flavor, plus a bit in the midranges for, well, middle ground stuff between the two.

I've also been playing with smoked and peated malt (very different- peated malt adds a lot more phenolic character and tends to be REALLY strong, like 2-4 oz is fine, whereas you can make most of your grain bill be rauch malt), but I will say that there's a surprising amount of "smoke" in the base recipe without any smoked malt, just from the yeast. I've got a friend who really wants a super-smoky ale, so tomorrow when I re-brew this stuff, I'm going to 3.5 oz of peated malt (woah, I'm craaaazy, somebody stop me!) and some medium-toast oak cubes in the secondary. It'll take months to calm down, I think, but it's what he wants.