Adventures in beer design Part I

Time to start designing beer number two. Where do you start when designing beer? First of all I need to decide what sort of style I want to make and how I want it to taste. I have few guiding principles – I want the beer to be refreshing and to have drinkability. That is, I want it to be more-ish but at the same time I want it to express the characteristics of the style of beer I am making. i.e. it needs to have flavour. So, basically, I want to produce a beer that refreshing but flavourful, is based on a style and can express the key characteristics of that style. Secondly I want the beer to be something that is unusual – that may be in terms of the style, name or a story behind the beer.


The first beer I produced, California Common, was all about a style that is seldom seen in the UK. It was a steam beer and was light in style. This time I think I will do something closer to home and am looking at brewing a Scottish ale. I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to brewing history and its influence on beer styles and the beers we have today. Edinburgh was once one of the UK’s great brewing centres and boasted numerous breweries. Delving into my brewing books and doing a bit of on-line research I see that Scottish beer had a distinct style. I won’t bore you with details of the how and why, but to summarise, it was malty and not very heavily hopped.


As with most beer styles the lines can be somewhat blurred and it can be difficult to categorize. However, for the sake of simplicity, I have decided to split Scottish ales into three sub-categories.


The first one is strong Scotch Ale which is typically high in alcohol. This can sometimes be called “Wee Heavy” and has an ABV (alcohol by volume) of around 6% and upwards. Hmm…I think I can rule this one out as the level of alcohol will mean that people will not be able to have more than a few before their legs give way! Also, I seem to remember drinking this in the form of a 90 shilling (the shilling system is a whole other story!) and it was quite sickly sweet.


The second is also Scotch Ale (just to confuse matters) but is of a much lower strength (below 4%). These were popular in the mid to late twentieth century and had widespread distribution in both Scotland and the North-East of England. Funnily enough, towards the latter end of the 20th Century this style was more popular in North-East England than in Scotland. Not sure if any of these exist anymore but I remember McEwan’s Scotch and I used to brew Whitbread Best Scotch at Castle Eden brewery. I guess this was a bastardisation of the strong Scotch Ales mentioned above and the strength was reduced for whatever reason. However, it seems to have been a very popular style amongst the miners and workers. This would suggest that it was a refreshing and sessionable beer. A possibility I think but I’m a bit concerned that a) it may be remembered as a kegged cheap beer and b) it may be confused with strong Scotch Ale.


The third category, I have designated as Scottish Ale (as opposed to Scotch) and further split into light, heavy and export (or 60/-, 70/- and 80/-, where “/-“ means shilling). These are well recognised in Scotland and there are huge variations from brewer to brewer. Commonly available on both keg and cask I don’t think these would be unusual.


Ok….so nothing is standing out and grabbing my attention. Once more I delve into the brewing books looking for inspiration and lo and behold – I think I’ve got it! You’ll have to forgive me for being a wee bit cagey about all the details but I have no idea who is reading this and don’t want to give too much away at this early stage but in a book about Scottish Beer published in 1847, the author talks about a “small beer” in Edinburgh which is “clear and very brisk, and, consequently, very agreeable to the palate.” This sounds encouraging in terms of a description.



So….how about I use this for inspiration and brew a Scottish Small Beer that has many of the characteristics of typical Scottish Ales (maltiness, low hopping rates) but has the qualities mentioned in the book(clear, brisk and very agreeable to the palate). It fits for a Scottish style beer that is brewed at somewhere between 3.5 – 4.5% ABV. Now we can get down to designing the actual product………….