Scotch Ale?

someone cue up Ron please....

Seriously you'll get the best answer here. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/

 

Yeah, what he said.


I will probably be corrected here, but it started really pale and really strong and got gradually darker and weaker. And the earlier ones were heavily hopped but finished sweet so were probably more like english barley wines maybe?


might be paler to darker and heavily hopped to less hopped rather than strength

Nowadays though you will get barrel aged ones, which can be excellent.

 

Sorta like a wee heavy

 

Not so much about barrels, but very much so about the grain bill utilized. All about the malts.

 

Not quite anything to do with barrels per say, more the type of brew the Scottish have brewed that was traditionally a top fermented beer using pale ale malt, unmalted roasted barley and pale caramel malt. Some people in the US started putting peat smoked malts in theirs thinking it was Scottish, but is not typically done in Scotland. Wee Heavies are a version of a Scotch Ale (the heavy duty version) but there are very light version as well, typically due to process involved. Most often Scotch Ales are very hop light as hops don't grow well in Scotland, so it's something they don't put in them. -Mostly from the Oxford Companion To Beer (Not sure but the Kindle edition was super cheap on Amazon recently).

 

J.W.Lees aged a beer in Lagavulin barrels

 

There was also ten guinea ale

quick google of that brings up Rons Blog

a guinea was 21 shillings usually, so 63, 84, 126, so on to 210 and 252 shilling ales.

 

Not directly like that , although historically there were things like the Free Mash Tun Act which will have influenced things along with other tax laws and rationing which lasted until the mid 1950s

 

A Wee Heavy is a scotch ale, and so is a heavy, and all of that plays into the shilling rating which is a representation of the fermentable sugars and alcohol content.

The history lesson in that link covers most of it, but here is an exta bit of info. Scotch ales originated in Scotland, but also have some history in Belgium stemming from World War I. Scottish soldiers stationed in Belgium wanted beer brewed in the same style that they were familiar with back home in Scotland, so the brewer at Brasserie Silly brewed that style for them. The style has remained in Belgium with a good bit of success.

Now Scotch Barrel aged beer! Yes it absolutely exists, and I've had some good ones. They are typically smokey, and not usually sweet, and from my experience are commonly stouts. Brewdog and Harviestoun both have entire lineups dedicated to Scotch barrel aging. Brewdog has the Paradox series, which is wonderful, aged in pretty much any scotch barrel the guys at Brewdog can get their hands on, and most of the recent editions specify what distillery the barrels came from. Harviestoun has the Ola Dubh series, also wonderful, which is specifically aged in barrels from the Highland Scotch Distillery. Ola Dubh 1991 just came out! I have also had Mikkeller Black Hole aged in Scotch barrels, and it was loaded with peat smoke character. It was good, but certainly a sipper.

 

And it was terrible...

Love smoky Single Malts, love J.W. Lees and their Harvest Ale, but yetch

 

Not a scotch ale, but aged in scotch barrels, and damn is it good.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16790/87516

 

There is more drivel written about Scottish brewing than anything else in the beer world.The Oxford Companion section is pure fantasy.
Wee Heavy came from Fowler's bottling of their 12 guinea ale (Heavy) in small (wee) bottles and has been misrepresented as a style. Scotch Ale issimilar to Burton Ale.

 

This system related to the wholesale price of a hogshead (54 gallons) and was unrelated to style.

 

There are a variety of beers here aged in Scottish whisky barrels. As everyone knows the Ola Dubh ranges uses various Highlands Park barrels while Hawkeshead in Cumbria (that in the Beautiful Lake District in England) has used Lowland Bladnoch barrels for their bottled Imperial stouts. Just two examples.

 

kernel have just released 3 ba Scottish whisky examples. glen garioch stout and imperial brown stout and glen spey imperial brown stout.

 

backwoods bastard and robert the bruce ftw, please someone recommend more like these they're so choice !

 

The section on Scotch Ales in the Oxford Companion To Beer was written by Horst Dornbusch and is total bullshit.

Not sure where the stuff about roast barley originated. I've never found a Scottish beer other than a Stout that used it. Drybrough used tiny amounts of black malt in their beers. Acottish beers were typically brewed from pale malt, corn grits and caramel for colouring. Maclay used a bit of crystal malt in the 1990's and William Younger occasionally used it, too. Real Scottish recipes are pretty boring, to be honest. Coloured malts of any kind were almost never used, other than in Stout.

I'm going to scream the next time someone says they didn't use many hops in Scotland because they don't grow there. Hops don't grow close to Burton, either.

 

It's my understanding that it's a Burton Ale brewed in Scotland. Strong, dark red, fruity and quite sweet. Not a widely used term in the UK as far as I know.