I know some brewers take some wort and boil it down to add back to a Scottish ale. Has anyone done that with other styles like ESB or mild or bock?
Did it in a Brown Ale once and a Barleywine once.
Can I say with 100% confidence that it made a difference? Absolutely not. But if I had to wager, I’d say yes it did. I think the key is exactly how much wort to pull and boil into that syrup. I really don’t know that answer, but in hindsight, both times I wished I had pulled a bit more.
I’ve done with with pilsener and helles with 100% pils malt grists. It definite had a small color and taste impact on those. May do it again soon for another helles and leave it out for pils.
I’ve done it with BW. Might not be bad for a bock. Might add too much sweetness for ESB or mild.
Some homebrewers may do this but it is not a Scottish technique. It’s a myth like using peat and extra long boils. This doesn’t mean you can’t use these techniques yourself but don’t attribute them to Scottish brewing. These myths need to be stomped out.
No where did the OP attribute this to the Scottish- just to make Scottish ale. The intent is to get the flavors of a very long boil as in done to produce some legit Scottish ale.
I don’t think anyone ever said it was a Scottish technique. It was brought to prominence 25 years ago by Scott Abene as a means to achieve a particular end, not as an authentic process.
traquair house did it as part of their thing, it might have caught on in lore from there
yeah, the extra long boils (or i guess sort of standard) lengths seem more like something in general from the 1800s, ron pattinson mentions multiple mashes and boils of many hours to achieve gravities in english beers, i believe the times on a lot of german boils were also 2 hours or more in that time period.
irl i had a no-boil hazy IPA recently that was just sort of heated to 80C and held there for an hour, but not boiled at all and it was one of the best hazy IPAs i have ever had. none of the hop burn i associate with them and tons of excellent flavour.
Skip the boil and go straight to the whirlpool?
IIRC Taquir house didn’t do that. They did run into a preheated cast iron brew kettle, which was direct fired. So the reduction thing might be a work around to emulate what happens on their system
That’s the way I recall it too
So was the direct fire a result of burning peat?
I have never seen anything to suggest that.
[quote]So was the direct fire a result of burning peat?
[/quote]
That is another myth. Scottish brewing was centered around Edinburgh which is in the heart of Scotland’s coal fields. Peat is found farther north. Why on earth would they waste money shipping peat from the north when they had some much coal/coke available under their feet?!
The Scots did not use extra long boils either. Ron Pattinson published boil times from brewery log books comparing several of the largest Scottish brewery practices with several of the largest London breweries. It was the London brewers that boiled longer!
I threw some headphones on and listened to that podcast yesterday at work. Some of the stuff the Scotts did made us homebrewers look like we never step over the guidelines. 
That’s because for them there were no guidelines
Not true. According to Ron, they were restricted in all sorts of ways about what grains they could use, what processes were allowed, etc. There was quite a bit of restriction in the UK laws for beer production, and especially so back in the 1800s.
Been traveling.
The answer would be no according to Ron Pattinson. There was plenty of coal around Edinburgh, pest was used in the north where there is little coal.
RE: Wort reduction and getting an exagerated malt character, I’ve found that White Labs Scottish ale yeast and some dark crystal gets me such great malt sweetness that I don’t need wort reduction.
Jumping in a bit late to this thread.
I have pulled some wort for an English Barleywine and boiled it down to caramelize the wort but never boiled it down to a syrup before adding it back to the kettle. Did not notice a lot of difference but it was worth a try.
When I make my Wee Heavy, I boil it for two hours which does tend caramelize the wort a bit and I like the results I get from this. The beer has a bit more body and a bit more sweetness than when I was only boiling it for an hour or so.