How to 80/-.

[arkadiuszmakarenko]

Hi could you help me with this style?
I`ve been looking for some history, and i didn`t find anything reliable.
Is it true that in Scotland they couldn`t grow hops, and this is the reason why all scottish styles are so little hopped.
How to brew this style like it used to be brewed. Did they use crystal malt or only pale?

I found two ways of brewing this beer, one is with pale malt as base malt melanoidin malt, crystal and small addition of chocolate to change color.
example:
3500g pale malt
250g melanoidin malt
200g crystal malt
50g chocolate malt

15 grams of goldings
Wyeast Scottish ale yeast.

And second one which uses only pale malt, and 2% roasted barley to add dryness and color.
4000g pale malt
80g roasted barley
15g goldings
Wyeast Scottish ale yeast.
But in this technique you have to boil worth very long time like 3-4h.

Could you help me with this a little bit?

[coatesg]

The second method involves taking the first few litres of run off from the mash and then boiling it to a thick caramel type liquid and then adding it back into the boil. It's not so bad, as long as you can start the boil and boil a pan of wort at the same time.

The other way of doing it is using speciality malts which is a much more straight forward brewday. I chose the second last time, and used S-04 (though Edinburgh is a good yeast) - it's one of the best brews I've done in some time. Racked after 7 days, and really good just 2 weeks after kegging. It was here: [url=viewtopic.php?f=24&t=29761&start=0]linky[url]. In your recipe, the melanoidin effectively gets swapped for the carapils and munich - but you need a decent whack of crystal for the full, sweetish flavour that the 80/- should have.

[Invalid Stout]

I think there is an awful lot of nonsense talked about Scottish beer, but I don't have the answers either. Many drinkers and brewers, though, believe the legends, so the idea that "Scottish beer is sweet and not hoppy" becomes true even if it wasn't true in the first place.

In the 1960s a Scottish brewer's core range would typically consist of Pale Ale, Export Ale and Sweet Stout. No mention of shillings.

It seems to me that what we now call 80/– is sweet to match the taste of the local market, not because hops are expensive. By the end of the 19th century, Edinburgh brewers were selling more IPA than Bass were, which suggests they were getting as many hops as they wanted to use.

Michael Jackson wrote about 80/– as being malty, but I have always found them more caramelly than malty.

[Dr. Lucien Sanchez]

I think there is an awful lot of nonsense talked about Scottish beer, but I don't have the answers either. Many drinkers and brewers, though, believe the legends, so the idea that "Scottish beer is sweet and not hoppy" becomes true even if it wasn't true in the first place.

In the 1960s a Scottish brewer's core range would typically consist of Pale Ale, Export Ale and Sweet Stout. No mention of shillings.

It seems to me that what we now call 80/– is sweet to match the taste of the local market, not because hops are expensive. By the end of the 19th century, Edinburgh brewers were selling more IPA than Bass were, which suggests they were getting as many hops as they wanted to use.

Michael Jackson wrote about 80/– as being malty, but I have always found them more caramelly than malty.

Agree with all this. Few styles are more misunderstood than the Scottish styles. Originally the shillings designated the wholesale price per hogshead, so going over the history, all that '80/' would tell you is the relative strength of the beer amongst the brewer's other offerings. And while they don't grow hops in Scotland, that fact had no bearing on what Scottish brewers brewed. They don't grow hops in Burton either, and as Invalid Stout posted, Scottish brewers dominated the IPA market for awhile.
As far as my research has taken me (although in fairness most of it has actually been Ron Pattinson's ([url]http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com//url]) research, what we think of today as 'Scottish Ale', particularly the 80/, is sort of an amalgamation of sorts. It seems to be descended from
a) the old 'Schilling ales' of the late 19th and early 20th century, which were the remnants of the pre-industrial unhopped ales (though these were at least lightly hopped) brewed entirely from pale malt, and later from pale malt, sugar and maize.
b) the 'Edinburgh Ales' or 'Scotch Ales' of the same time period, which were higher gravity and popular exports both in England and the continent, which were the Scottish version of 'Burton Ale', the dark, malty (though heavily hopped) high-gravity export ale that made Burton famous before pale ale. Scotch ale was very popular in and around the Edwardian era, surpassing Burton ales at some London pubs as the high-gravity premium choice, particularly Youngers' No. 3, which survived into the modern era.

Much of this is conjecture on my part, cobbled together from researchers far more diligent than I. But near as I can tell, 80/ essentially evolved as an amalgam of these two styles, combining the light hopping of the shilling ales with the colour and malty, caramelly flavour of the Edinburgh ales.

[Invalid Stout]

I also have only conjecture to offer. Unfortunately I have a job now and can't spend all day in the Scottish Brewing Archive as I'd like to, finding out the truth. But I don't agree with you that "Scottish Ale", whatever it is, is descended from pre-industrial ale or from Edinburgh Ale. I think they are just Pale Ales. It's not as if there aren't any sweetish, toffeeish best bitters in England.

Scotch Ale is often just a marque for export, trading on the hope that the customer will consider Scotch a guarantee of quality. Younger's used to sell the same bottled beer (No. 1) as Strong Ale in Scotland, Strong Scotch Ale in England and Barley Wine in Ireland.

[mysterio]

It wouldn't be the first time BJCP made up a style... at least they're not saying it's smoked beer any more.

[Invalid Stout]

It wouldn't be the first time BJCP made up a style... at least they're not saying it's smoked beer any more.

Eh? Sorry, I didn't catch that, I was busy brewing on the peat fire on my croft in Glasgow.

[grumpysod]

It wouldn't be the first time BJCP made up a style... at least they're not saying it's smoked beer any more.

Eh? Sorry, I didn't catch that, I was busy brewing on the midden fire outside my tenement in Glasgow.

Corrected

[Invalid Stout]

No, no, you didn't get the joke. I think a large part of the reason American beer geeks are willing to believe myths about Scottish beer being made with smoked malt is because it fits in with a romantic Disney-type picture of Scotland which has not much to do with what modern Scotland is actually like.