Advice on heather ale / Barley wine ?

[raybroach]

Hi . new to this and would greatly appreciate any help on what or what not to do and any possible recipes .
I wish to brew a simple strong Scottish barley wine or heather ale or a combination.
All my ingediants are local ( Broch area N/E Scotland.)
I have lots of Barley grown for the scottish whiskey industry. Heather , Gorse and Meadowsweet flowers from my own land,
Spring water again my own land. I have local heather honey. Irish Moss from a location only 3 miles away. I will malt my own barley and toast batches
with peat and smoke some with beech chippings all local. I am trying to achive a 9/10 ABV with low impact locally sourced ingredients.
So far no joy finding a recipe with one barley only. The yeast factor is also a complex question. I plan to start with one basic wort and divide into four fermentaion vessels
adding different ingrediants to 3 of them and leaving one as a base line to find a desirable finnish. Can you share your findings in succes or failings as any information would be greatly recieved. All my brewing kit is homemade by myself from 316 Stainless steel. Slàinte mhath.

 

[madscientist451]

Scottish barley wines are called Wee Heavy or just Scotch Ale and it may be difficult to find single malt recipes because its just better with multiple malts.
Here's one that uses mostly all UK pale malt with just a small amount of continental malt:
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2011/09/lets-brew-wednesday-1868-younger-no-3.htmlHere are all the posts from the same source using wee heavy in the search:
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search?q=wee+heavy&max-results=20&by-date=trueSince you are new to brewing, it might be better to just buy some malted barley and make a few brews and get your methods/equipment all figured out. While the first beers are fermenting you can start making your own malt. Note that using 100% wood and/or peat smoked malt in a beer may (or may not) be historically accurate, but it also may not be suitable for modern tastes. If you can figure a way to kiln the malt with wood as a heat source and keep the smoke out of it then you'll be fine.
A small amount of smokiness is OK, but I've had some beers where the smoke character made them undrinkable.
There are several frequent posters here on HBT malting grains and a few articles:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/adventures-in-home-malting.679100/Thanks for posting and please update with how it comes out.

Edit: Several sources are saying skip the smoked/peated malt in a Wee Heavy, but here's a recipe where 2-4 oz of smoked malt are used in a 5 gallon batch:
https://beerandbrewing.com/for-peats-sake/

 

[raybroach]

Thank you. Good links, very helpful.