Belhaven Scottish Ale recipe

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jturman35

jturman35

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Hey guys I was wondering if anyone had a extract clone for a Belhaven Scottish Ale? One of my favorite beers and I thought I would try and clone for my 3rd batch.
 
Austin Homebrew Supply
though my review reads:
Good and of style, but my brew is thin and only slightly peaty. This batch is rather close to Highland Gaelic Ale rather than to Belhaven. Caveat: This only my 6th brew and 1st Scottish Ale. 3* out of 5.
Click to expand...

Maltose Express
has 80 Shilling and Wee Heavy clones.
The 80 Shilling is in Clone Brews.
The Wee Heavy is in Beer Captured.
 
I was hoping I could just buy the LME and ingredients separate. I have purchased 2 complete extract kits and want to start venturing out a bit.
 
This scored highly as an all-grain recipe but should work out great as an extract recipe, which I've converted for you. This should get you real close to what you will enjoy:

Manty MacMalters Scottish 70/- (Extract)
5.25 gallons post-boil

OG=1.039
FG=1.011
ABV=3.8%
IBU=21
SRM=14

3.15 lb Maris Otter LME
1.5 lb Light DME
6 oz English Crystal 75
3 oz Victory malt
3 oz Roasted Barley
1 oz Kent Goldings (5.5% alpha, 45 minutes)
WLP028 Edinburgh Ale yeast

Use 100% distilled water with 1/2 teaspoon calcium chloride -- this is not for pH control but is for flavor.

Steep grains up to 170 F then discard spent grains. Add extracts then bring to boil for 45 minutes, adding hops at the beginning of the boil. Cool, pitch, and ferment at 62 F until finished. Carbonate a little on the lower end of the scale. Should be served slightly warmish at around 50 F to bring out all the flavors.

Hope you like it.
 
Thanks! this is more along the lines of what I was looking for! Was this pretty close to the Belhaven Scottish Ale?
 
I haven't done a side by side tasting, but it is a great Scottish ale and was inspired by Belhaven. Cannot promise that it is really a clone, not yet anyway.
 
Interested in doing the Manty McMalters recipe. If I wanted to make it a 90 shilling version (about 7.4% ABV), would I just increase the amount of LME and DME?
 
FWIW, and you'd have to convert to extract for your base, but in Roger Protz's Real Ale Drinker's Almanac he has the BH 90/- as OG 1070, ABV 7.5%; with 85% Golden Promise, 4% Black Malt, 12% liquid sugar; then an unspecific mix of Fuggles, Goldings, and British Columbian Bramling Cross.

The book has 60/-, 70/-, 80/-, and 90/-.
 
deere322 said:
Most of all, use a Scottish Ale yeast.
Otherwise you're wasting your time.
Click to expand...

I don't necessarily agree with that. This style is more about the malt, and relative lack of hops, than any significant yeast character. Many less-than-moderate attenuating ale yeasts would fit the bill. Heck, even a lager yeast wouldn't be totally out of place IMO.
 
dmtaylor said:
I don't necessarily agree with that. This style is more about the malt, and relative lack of hops, than any significant yeast character. Many less-than-moderate attenuating ale yeasts would fit the bill. Heck, even a lager yeast wouldn't be totally out of place IMO.
Click to expand...

But it won't be a Belhaven then.
OP, use Scottish ale yeast.
 
Yea, really wanted to do a Belhaven Scottish Ale, but no luck finding a clone recipe. Poopy because this is my favorite beer
 
Thanks for the replies! I know original post said extract but now I'm leaning on doing BIAB. I have got to figure out which one of these will best fit my 8 gal boil pot. I'd like to keg 5 gallons.
 
The all-grain version of my recipe is about the same with Golden Promise malt replacing all the extract, and with double the English Crystal 75 at 12 oz of that. The rest stays the same. Mash at 153 F for an hour.
 
dmtaylor said:
The all-grain version of my recipe is about the same with Golden Promise malt replacing all the extract, and with double the English Crystal 75 at 12 oz of that. The rest stays the same. Mash at 153 F for an hour.
Click to expand...


What would be the best way to bump up the ABV?
 
dmtaylor said:
The all-grain version of my recipe is about the same with Golden Promise malt replacing all the extract, and with double the English Crystal 75 at 12 oz of that. The rest stays the same. Mash at 153 F for an hour.
Click to expand...


What would be the best way to bump up the ABV closer to 5.2% like the original?
 
Use 10 or 11 pounds of Golden Promise (the base malt), depending on your efficiency. Use software to determine exactly how much base malt to use for your efficiency. If you don't know your efficiency, assume it will be approximately 70%.
 
harlond said:
Can I ask why you add twice the English Crystal for all-grain than extract? And thanks for your help above.
Click to expand...

Great question. I find that extracts typically have a caramel flavor by themselves, just by the process of making the extract, so not as much crystal malt should be needed in the extract batch. It's a bit of a swag but it works.
 
Scottish ales are my favorite also and I have brewed several, although all have been all grain. From what I have read/heard, the mash is high 158 or so (to maximize the non-fermentable sugars) and the fermentation is in the low 60s (which is low for an ale yeast). Also generally most of the caramelization happens by utilizing a long boil time (90 to 120 mins). For my next heavy I'm going to use all base malt and a 2-3 hour boil to see what happens. Whatever you do, it will be beer. Cheers :mug: :rockin:
 
There is definitely some magic from a long boil of 2-4 hours if you can do that. A friend of mine boils one of his beers for 3 hours and the slightly burnt caramel flavor he gets from such a long boil is unique and magical and cannot be duplicated by any other way.
 
jturman35 said:
What would be the best way to bump up the ABV closer to 5.2% like the original?
Click to expand...

Huh? 80/- is 3.9% and 25IBU, uses only pale malt with a touch of black for colour (as has been mentioned, Scottish breweries tended to go for a long boil rather than crystal, Best has a bit of crystal but not 80/-) and Challenger, Goldings and Fuggles.

A key part of Scottish brewing is the relatively low temperatures, see this from AAB :

has a splendid, dry finish, giving it a rich, distinctive and memorable flavor reminiscent of fine old Scotch whisky. The faintest hint of smoked malt comes from the Scottish-grown East Moravian two-row barley, malted on the brewery premises in the traditional manner, something one rarely sees in this age of specialization. The malting towers of Belhaven are the brewery’s most distinctive landmark, although they are no longer used as kilns. Belhaven started brewing in 1719 and is still a small brewery by American standards.

Belhaven Ale is brewed from 10-degree extract (1.041) in 4,300-gallon batches, using well water from deep Dunbar wells. Traditional English East Kent Golding hops are added in the boil, and a batch is boiled in two segments in the brew copper (they call their brew kettle a “copper”), usually designed to hold only 2,600 gallons at a time. The beer is fermented initially for 40 hours at 58 degrees F/14.5 degrees C followed by four more days of slow ferment at 52 degrees F/11 degrees C. The result is a rather mild alcohol content of 3.3/4.25 percent
Click to expand...

Don't quite get the % he quotes, unless it's a mix of Best (which Greene King have now taken down to 3.2%) and the 4.2% quoted by some for the cask version of 80/-. Anyway, the main point is that it's not warm on the Scottish coast, and those low temperatures can be difficult for non-Scottish ale yeasts, although overpitching helps.
 
Apologies - if you see eg Ratebeer you'll see that this is a US version, the Scottish Ale in Europe has historically been the bottled version of the 3.9% 80/-.

It looks like the latest rebrand has followed the Guinness model of introducing the export version to the home market as a premium "craft" product, I should have worked out that it had changed seeing a bottle labelled as 80/- but the Scottish Ale is tucked away at the bottom of their "craft" page.

But it does mean that on an international forum many people who see the phrase "Belhaven Scottish Ale" will assume you're talking about the bottled version of 80/- because the 5.2% beer just isn't really known in the UK, and there's lots of British clone recipes for 80/-. Comparing Scottish Ale with 80/- you've got 5.0% ABV in keg, 5.2% in bottle, 100% Scottish pale malt, 21 IBU of Challenger and Goldings in the former, compared to 3.9%, pale and black, and 25 IBU of Challenger, Goldings and Fuggles in the latter.

Since the late 19th century Scottish brewers have been quick to use caramel for colour and sugars, so it looks like the "Deep ruby" 5.0% is being coloured with caramel or maybe something like invert no 4, I'd have thought it's likely that there's sugar in there somewhere.

I guess the hopping is essentially the same as the 80/- clones, just without the Fuggles because foreigners think that Scottish beers aren't as hoppy as what is actually drunk in Scotland. Scottish beers seem to have suffered more than most in the 20th century from the triple threats of accountants, pasteurisation and wartime, which left Scottish beer unrecognisable from the 60+ IBU hop monsters of the 19th century. But that's a rant for another time....
 
Some very good insight and info! I just assumed the bottled beer was the same everywhere. I had this beer when I was in Chicago and it became my favorite.
 
dmtaylor said:
This scored highly as an all-grain recipe but should work out great as an extract recipe, which I've converted for you. This should get you real close to what you will enjoy:

Manty MacMalters Scottish 70/- (Extract)
5.25 gallons post-boil

OG=1.039
FG=1.011
ABV=3.8%
IBU=21
SRM=14

3.15 lb Maris Otter LME
1.5 lb Light DME
6 oz English Crystal 75
3 oz Victory malt
3 oz Roasted Barley
1 oz Kent Goldings (5.5% alpha, 45 minutes)
WLP028 Edinburgh Ale yeast

Use 100% distilled water with 1/2 teaspoon calcium chloride -- this is not for pH control but is for flavor.

Steep grains up to 170 F then discard spent grains. Add extracts then bring to boil for 45 minutes, adding hops at the beginning of the boil. Cool, pitch, and ferment at 62 F until finished. Carbonate a little on the lower end of the scale. Should be served slightly warmish at around 50 F to bring out all the flavors.

Hope you
Click to expand...
Which of these recipes would you order crushed? We have a basic beer equipment so wanted to make an extract.
 
Kylejennings said:
Which of these recipes would you order crushed? We have a basic beer equipment so wanted to make an extract.
Click to expand...
Order the English Crystal 75, Victory, and Roasted Barley to be crushed. If you don't have a steeping bag yet, order that as well.

Wecome to the forum! I hope you enjoy this recipe and the forums. A lot of great people with great advice here on HBT. Cheers!
 

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