Working out a wee heavy. The father in law and I had a great time hanging out with founders Dirty Bastard. So the question was asked, “Can you make this?”
An hour later I am starring at the question, 1 gal 1st runnings boiled to a thick syrup or crystal malts, or both even.
I know that I only want to use a small amount of roasted malts for that deep ruby color. What is your take on a wee heavy?
What information does Founder make available about this beer? Replicating their recipe and process (as closely as possible) on a H B level would be the way to go.
I haven’t made a wee heavy, but I did do a scottish ale that I used the ‘boil down a gallon to syrup’ method on. I did the recipe twice in quick succession. The first time was with the boil down and the second was with crystal malts. Of the two, I preferred the second. Granted, I’m sure this has a lot to do with your burner, boil intensity, and how far down you let it go yadda yadda.
No crystal, IMO. I don’t think you can find a better or more authentic tasting wee heavy recipe than this one…Site Not Found . Leave out the mushrooms…
+1. Brewed this one last fall and it tastes pretty darn good right now. Plenty of malt with just the Golden Promise and roasted barley. Surprisingly so! Malt bombs away!!
Awesome, Rob. Glad to hear it came out great.
I do like the boil down method. But, if the goal is to get close to Dirty Bastard, doing it Founders way would get you closer. They claim 8.5% abv, 50 IBU, and 7 different malts.
Ugh… 7 malts…
Pale
Munich
Medium Crystal
Dark crystal
Smoked
Roasted
Adjunct?? Maybe wheat?
Just a guess. Idk
For a Dirty Bastard type scotch, I wouldn’t use any smoked malts or wheat. Maybe 20% Munich, 2 row base, and mix some crystals and a couple oz of roasted barley to hit maybe 20-22 SRM. And I would mash low, like 149F/90 mins considering the mix of crystals. Scottish strain.
I was thinking wlp001 or 028 both are similar and I have a .5l fresh slurry of 001. I assumed smoked malt in there for dirty Bastard. It’s not to style it had a bit of smoke in the aroma to me anyway. And I think it even mentions smoke flavors IIRC. I was thinking normal hockurtz 
but Idk… I like the simplicity of wee shromy denny, but it’s not the color or complexity I was hoping for. I am afraid it would come out as a over hopped impy red ale without the shrooms at ~50 IBUs from challenger and maybe some EKG
Maybe carapils? Kosmicki like to use carapils in his beers. 50 IBUs are balanced with the carapils and crystal IIRC as to what Kosmicki said at the 2014 GR HBC.
Oh, they use 1056 as the house yeast. So 001 would work.
Well if 1056 is their house yeast u don’t feel bad using 001 as a on hand substitution.
Carapils tracks… so prelim
60% UK base either MO or GP
10% Munich 10L
10% Carapils
10% Crystal 40/60L
5% Crystal 120L
5% roasted barley
~20SRM
50ish IBUS
001
I definitely wouldn’t use 5% roasted barley. It’ll be pretty roasty at that level. Personally, I’d use 1% and finish adjusting color with the dark crystals.
Edit - I’d be willing to bet that they use a 2 row base, too. It’ll be good either way, though .
Ska’s Oskar Blue’s Old Chub uses ~2.5% beechwood smoked malt and what it imparts is really mellow. This is the formulation I used last spring for this brew and the results were excellent. The color was ~26SRM and IBUs were matched 26IBUs (tinseth). Perhaps it will spark some ideas, perhaps not.
73% Pale Malt, Optic (Fawcett)
11.5% Crystal Dark - 77L (Crisp)
8% Munich Malt, Light (Avangard)
3% Special B (Dingemans)
2.5% Beechwood Smoked Malt (Weyermann)
2% Carafa Special II (Weyermann)
that’s a lot of crystal malt OP (25%). also I think you’re in stout range with that grist, giving it the eyeball test. might want to rethink that - I like the 1% roasted malts and using the crystal weights to target the color you want.
bear in mind, even mashing low, you may still not get high 70s attenuation.
that Old Chub recipe (isn’t that Oskar Blues name?) looks pretty tasty too.
Yeah, I’d drop the carapils in a heartbeat, even if they use it. Can’t see the benefit in a beer that big. That would help.
I will never keep those two breweries straight :D. Thanks for catching that (I edited the post).
Brewed this up today. Settled on scratching the carapils. My efficiency was much lower than I am used to. Maris Otter GP blended base dark crystal roasted barley and black. Close Edinburgh (boiled) water profile pH 5.32 measured, but Brunwater put it at 5.2. I got 63.2% efficiency? Step mashed 144F/152/158/MO. So boiled for the rough 75% 1.086. Ended up with about 7.25 gallons. Ended up being 2hr15m boil but hops added at 90mins. Pushed calculated IBUs up but I will know for next time. The boiled down wort tasted really roasted. Like straight up black malt. I added it in good faith but, wow it was rough.
I’m of the opinion that the Strong Scotch is a stronger variant of a regular Scottish Ale. Here is my Scottish Promise recipe (Scottish 70) that I enjoy. 5.5 gal batch
38 oz Golden Promise
32 oz 2-row Pale
15 oz Simpson Medium Crystal
9 oz Honey Malt
9 oz Munich 1
2 oz Crisp Brown Malt (for a teeny smoke note)
3 oz Crisp Pale Chocolate Malt
3 oz Simpsons Extra Dark Crystal
9 gm Brewers Gold pellets at 8.7% for 60 min
Clean ale yeast
Edinburgh water profile (over 100 ppm sulfate!)
Be careful, this recipe may be skimpy for other brewers since this assumes 87% system efficiency. Scale the recipe to your efficiency. I also take a quart of the first runnings and boil them down to magma and try to get its temperature to near 350F (this is really tough to do well without burning).
If you subscribe to Jamil Z’s theory, to produce the variation in strength for these beer style variants, you just adjust only the base malts and leave the specialty malt quantities alone. I have not scaled this recipe to the Strong Scotch level, but it should work.
The light hopping and the sulfate in the water help this beer dry out quite well while still letting the malt through to dominate. Remember, sulfate does not make beer bitter, it makes them dryer finishing.
JJeffers090, that recipe seems to employ significant roast malt. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there is significant roast notes in the beer. I hope not. This could be a case where the drying effect of using the Edinburgh water may be too much. Remember that roast grains have a drying effect also. I don’t think much is needed in a Strong Scotch.
Ended up with 3.3% roasted malts or .75#/7.2gal I know it is higher than most, but again cloning founders DB it seemed in the ballpark. Time will tell, and that recipe looks great! Thanks Martin, if this turns to sh*t I will be brewing that up.