Irish Red Ale Recipe
I was probing around some online chat forums and discovered some advice on making a red ale. I have struggled in the past with getting a red ale to actually be red and not some sort of weird yellowish-hued-brown color. A couple other red ale brewers said that low amounts of black patent or roasted barely (1-2oz total) imparts a red color without much flavor.
So I put my own recipe together. Don’t know when I’ll get to it, but I am intrigued to try it. Here it is:
Irish Ale #1
9-D Irish Red Ale
Size: 6.5 gal
Efficiency: 65%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Original Gravity: 1.049 (1.044 - 1.060)
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.010 - 1.014)
Color: 19.2 (9.0 - 18.0)
Alcohol: 4.82% (4.0% - 6.0%)
Bitterness: 26.79 (17.0 - 28.0)
Ingredients:
12 lbs American 2-row
1 lbs 2-Row Carapils® Malt
0.5 lbs Midwest Wheat Malt
0.5 lbs Crystal 60
0.125 lbs Crystal 120
0.25 lbs American Black Patent
0.25 lbs Roasted Barley
1.5 tsp Irish Moss - added during boil, boiled 15 min
0.5 oz Nugget (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
1 ea White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout
Mash temp 154F.
Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.0.28
on December 3rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
When you tried getting a red color before, did you try using 80L Crystal malt? From what I have read, it seems like that this type of malt imparts a red color.
on December 4th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
IMO, the problem with deriving color using crystal malt is an imbalance in the finished flavor. Crystal malts give you good residual sweetness with varying degrees of flavor, lighter crystal is a maltier sweetness and higher amounts startes to give you raisin dried fruit flavors. To get the the same color from a quarter once of 450 Lovibond roasted barely using an 80 Lovibond (or even 120 Lovibond) crystal would put you in a range that imparts more crystal flavor than I would want in a beer. Such low amounts of the darker kilned roasted malt keeps that flavor impact minimal, but the hint of roast gives that drier finish in the final flavor. For this style, I think that a drier, maltier flavor profile is sought after. Too much crystal would give a sweeter malt character closer to English Pale instead of the drier Irish Amber. This recipe already has a fair amount of crystal in it, using more to drive the color would start to increase the residual sweetness out of style.
Realistically, I should drop the crystal 120L and use a little more “roast” now that I think about it.