--- Mark Poliner > wrote: >I usgest using a Scottish ale recipe. OG 1.080. Rich & malty. Use other >malts for color & flavor. I suggest 1/2# Scottish caramel, 1/2# Gambrinus >ESB or Brown malt, 1/4# chocolate. Use 8# light DME. No hops. 1/2# >heather tips and nice scotish ale yeast. > >This worked wonders for me. What level of alcohol are you aiming at for the heather ale ? As a quick guideline FG is often placed at OG/4 so the above recipe would give (80-20)/7.3 = 8.2% ABV. If you aim higher or lower, adjust your OG. Water treatment is another thing to fiddle around with to give more body. Adding NaCl (common tablesalt) to the water will give a fuller taste. Mashing temperature plays a minor role as well. Higher temp yields more dextrines (unfermentable by S. Cereviseae(sp?)). Personally I like to add a bit of unmalted oats for a Scottish type ale. My last batch had 60% unmalted,flaked oats in it. I dry roasted it in a pan and poured 1/2 cup of cask strength Laphroaig over it. I nearly lost my eyebrows when setting fire to it but when the flames had died out parts of the top layer looked like dark malt even though I'd turned it a few times while burning. I kept the mash temp around 78 C and the final brew turned out a nice coppery/brownish red with a licorice smell and malty taste. Bittering was done with hops alone since I couldn't get any heather. It has plenty of body but not quite a knife-and-fork body. A spoon will do. /Angus == If you look at the sun without shielding youreyes you'll go blind. If you look at the moon without shielding your eyes you'll become a poet. _____________________________________________________________ Get your own mando cool and totally free email@iamawitch.com address at http://freemail.iamawitch.com today! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send email to majordomo@pbm.com containing the words "unsubscribe hist-brewing" (or unsubscribe hist-brewing-digest, if you get the digest.) To contact a human about problems, send mail to owner-hist-brewing@pbm.com