Good question. I really have no idea but thought it might add a bit of caramel flavor without using any actual caramel malt. I would love to hear more thoughts on that.
I am collecting RO water for my 175th brewday since AL made Homebrewing legal which will be a tip of the hat to Belhaven 60/-. Mr Wheeler says it is an excellent example of a Scottish Mild with just 87.3% Pale Malt, 2.7% Crystal malt, 3.6% Black malt and 6.4% sugar.
Though he does state to boil the wort 90 min, he doesn’t indicate drawing off the wort and boiling it down to a syrup. He also has a recipe for Belhaven 80/- and 90/- neither of which call for boiling down the wort to a syrup either. This may or may not be authentic but I think I’ll follow his lead for this one.
In his discussion of the sugar he does recommend invert so I made some invert syrup to use in my version of this recipe.
I’ve recently used the boil-down for a Brown Ale and I think it added some depth to the beer, but that’s anecdotal in the extreme.
As Denny says, my thought with boiling some wort down to a syrup here is to create a caramel flavor, maybe give some fullness…if that makes sense. Whether this technique is historically accurate isn’t really a concern.
This is going back a ways for me, but I seem to recall Scotrat’s Traquair House used a separate boil down to achieve a unique flavor similar to an invert gives some Brit styles. But whether it does or not, I just don’t remember clearly, though I recall doing it at least once. The real way I do recall for making a 60/- Scot ale was to take the second runnings of a wee heavy and adding a bit of DME to get the right OG. I did that with a neighbor’s Wee Heavy that he was going to toss the grains on and it was quite good. Partigyle essentially…
I tried the boil down approach once with a Scottish ale. It was a pain in the a$$ and I don’t think it added anything to the flavor. I’m not sure I boiled it down enough, but I did as much as I had the time and patience for. Now I just use Golden Promise with a bit of Special B and a bit of roasted barley.
Interesting. I’m wondering why boiling some wort was such a PITA? I did this a few months ago with a Brown Ale and it was just a matter of ladling out some mash and reducing it in a small pot. The process gets started as the wort is coming to a boil and is finished long before the boil is over (for my 3-gal batches, that’s ≈ 48oz reduced to a syrupy 12, give or take). I won’t argue the fact that it may not have added much to the flavor as I had nothing to compare it to, but I thought it did. I’d happily try this again and I would think IF boiling down adds anything, it would show up in a simple 60/-.
I’m personally not a fan of Special B and honestly, I don’t see why a 60/- needs anything other than a Pale malt and a touch of roast. 2 grains, period. Flaked Maize and Invert show up in Pattinson’s blog, but I don’t think either are necessary. Does the flaked maize help put the “light” in the Scottish Light? Personal preference, I suppose.
As mentioned, Scott came up,withheld boildown for a wee heavy. That’s where I use it and have found it definitely makes a difference. How much of a difference depends on how far you boil it down. It seems that I need at least a 4:1 reduction. I have never tried it for any other style because I don’t want that character in other beers.
Can you explain “that character”? I was hoping to get a bit of caramel-like flavor from boiling down a small portion of a mash that is essentially Maris Otter. Pipe dream?
I also do wonder if boiling-down a small portion of the mash is all that much different than just extending the main boil…from say 60 to 90 minutes??
It’d be nice if I could go to the distributor and pick up a few different 60 shillings to see what I’m really after. Yeah, good luck with that. Right now, I’m chasing the BJCP guidelines. ;D
Caramel/toffee character is exactly what I get. I boil a gal down to less than a qt. Also seems to add some mouthfeel. I have found that boiling down less, so I end up with more than a qt., really decreases what I want from it. My experience with longer boils is that they don’t give me the same character as a boildown because they don’t concentrate the wort as much, or produce as intense Maillard reactions.
