Irish Red

Foster82

Foster82

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Here is an Irish Red I put together for my next brew later this spring, what are your thoughts/recommendations?

5.5 gal

9.5 lb United Kingdom - Pale 2-Row
2 lb United Kingdom - Crystal 15L
1.5 lb German - Melanoidin
6 oz United Kingdom - Roasted Barley
13.38 lb total (going for just over 6%)

1 oz Kent Goldings 60 min
0.5 oz Kent Goldings 5 min


White Labs - California Ale Yeast WLP001 (yes an Irish Red should use a lager yeast, but it is going to be way to warm in my house by the time I get to this batch for a lager)
 
Either the White Labs WLP004 or Wyaest 1084 Would be the best. The hardest thing to get right in a Red is the color. What is the SRM on this recipe?
 
Hammer1 said:
What is the SRM on this recipe?
Click to expand...
With the orginal grain bill I am at 23.05 which is darker than I would like. My goal is the get the ABV just above 6%, but I don't want to thin it out to much with 2-row.

After sleeping on it, I have reworked the grain bill to lighten it up, and added some rice for an American touch. The SRM is now at 17.3

9 lb - United Kingdom - Pale 2-Row (73.5%)
1.5 lb - United Kingdom - Crystal 15L (12.2%)
1 lb - Flaked Rice (8.2%)
8 oz - German - Melanoidin (4.1%)
4 oz - United Kingdom - Roasted Barley (2%)

I was considering WLP001, because summer temps in my house are around 78-80 and I will be using a foam box and ice packs to keep it cooler but I don't want to try and cool much below 70.
 
SRM of 9 to 18 is where you want to be. Over 6% may be a little strong especially with no flavor hops. A few tablespoons of Gypsom and you've got a winner.
 
Hammer1 said:
SRM of 9 to 18 is where you want to be. Over 6% may be a little strong especially with no flavor hops. A few tablespoons of Gypsom and you've got a winner.
Click to expand...

I did adjust the hops, so there is a .5 oz at 15min and another .5 oz at flameout. I also adjusted the grain bill slightly for US grains. Here is what the recipe is shaping up to be, and I believe that I will call it American Red Ale.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/37141/american-red-ale
 
If you're going to do an American red ale, why not use American hop varieties? In for a penny, as they say.... Liberty, Mosaic (if you can get it), domestic Crystal....
 
Nosybear said:
If you're going to do an American red ale, why not use American hop varieties? In for a penny, as they say.... Liberty, Mosaic.
Click to expand...

So I did some searching and and decided to go all American on this one. Out with the German Melanoidin and in with some US Victory. For the hops I decided on a mix of the old and new, I am not sure what this beer will resemble or taste like but very soon I will be brewing it. :D

0.5 oz - Cluster for 60 min, Type: Pellet, Use: Boil (AA 7.9, IBU: 14.29)
0.5 oz - Mosaic for 15 min, Type: Pellet, Use: Boil (AA 12, IBU: 10.77)
0.5 oz - Mosaic for 0 min, Type: Pellet, Use: Boil (AA 12)
 
Nosybear said:
Mosaic (if you can get it).
Click to expand...

Turns out Mosaic Hops are in short supply. I called my LHBS and they looked them up and said all they could order was 2lbs. I then told them I only needed 1 oz, but they went ahead and ordered 2lbs to have on hand, and should be there next week. :D +1 for the LHBS
 
You may be on to something with this "American Red." Let us know how it turns out, please!
 
Nosybear said:
Let us know how it turns out, please!
Click to expand...

Will do, I plan on brewing this on or around Mar 8th so if anyone has any more input please let me know.

For an official name I am thinking "Brewer's Friend Red Ale"
 
Well good news and bad news! The good news is the brew is in the fermenter. The bad new is I missed my OG of 1.06 and only hit 1.05 (66%) :( , so I guess it’s not going to be as strong as I would have liked. If I could just get my water calculations right I would not have had this problem. I ended up with an extra gallon of wort that never made it into the brew pot (still using the good old turkey fryer). On the plus side I now have some wort that should work great for starters. “Brew and learn”
 
So the extra water could be coming from a number of places, but if want us to help, post some details and we'll take a look.
 
Well Larry, I believe that problem is I did not follow the calculators on this site! After relooking my water calculation it totaled up to 41 quarts, when I really only needed 35. My problem arose when I decided to thin out my mash, but not adjust my sparge water. However I am getting closer to dialing in my water requirements, I just wish the site had a profile for cheap a** with a turkey fyer that doubles as a kettle and mash tun LOL.

In the end I am going to stick with the thicker mash, as I do a double batch sparge, and if I go to thin on the mash I don’t have enough water left for two sparges.
 
Try the water tracking feature in the Brew -> Mash Calculator feature. That's how I track how much water has been used. The first 'drain to kettle' accounts for grain absorption which is pretty cool.

In using it today for my brew session, I want to improve that section in a couple ways.
 
Looking at the “quick water requirements” under tools on the recipe tabs it does say that I need 39.5 quarts for my recipe. I ended up using 41, had 4 extra and 23.5 in the fermenter. So total volume after everything was said and done I had 27.5 quarts wort. Now I did boil for 2 hours so that I could get as much of my sparge water into the kettle as possible (I really need to ditch the turkey fryer pot), looking at my notes I topped off my kettle with a total of 6 quarts over the course of the boil. This puts my boil off right around 3 quarts/hour, which makes sense due to my kettle being fairly tall and narrow, and not boiling very hard to prevent boil over. I do BIAB, and I believe the act of lifting the grains in the bag squeezes grain and I am only losing .45 quarts/pound. Now all said and done and adjustments being made to my profile, the water requirements come out to 34.4 on a 90 min boil. Which is right on par with my last brew that had 1.75 pounds less grain and I used 34 quarts of water, with only 1 quart extra that in all reality could have made it into the pot. Now you might be thinking I am still ending with a lot of wort, but I try and hit 5.75 in the fermenter, because I find that I lose about ¾ of a gallon to trub, and a short case of beer is just aggravating :evil: .

On another note, I have found that you will lose about 2 quarts of water in a fine mesh hop bag, because the hops plug up the bag and getting the wort back out is problematic at best, which is why I have done away with mine and filter the hops out with my funnel screen.

I have some time off coming up, and I am going test the boil off of my kettle with a full kettle boil and I will weight my grains after my next brew to see just how much water they soak up. This way I can truly dial in my profile. On the plus side the temp calculations from the site seem to be spot on.

Lastly, I have to say the yeast starter calculator is great, pitched my first ever liquid yeast and first starter into this brew at 4:30 yesterday afternoon and woke up this morning at 8:00 to the airlock bubbling about once every second. Shortest lag time I have had to date.
 
Good, sounds like you are getting things dialed in and the tools are helping!
 
This brew has been an issue since day one. My FFT is only showing 70% attenuation, for an ABV of 4.59% and here I was going for 6. The next question, is it the yeast or the mash temp (mashed @ 154 for 60 min)? I will soon know, I went ahead and pitch some US-05 into the FFT to see it attenuates anymore, and I am also doing a ferment off with some of the extra wort I had from this batch. US-05 in one test and WLP001 in another. Now this wort is pre boil and from the second sparge, but expect it should still give me a fairly go idea of what the attenuation % should be. I will post back the results, however I believe the problem is the brewer and I am going to ended up with some malty ale.

I believe this brew is begging to be back on deck to get dialed in :) .
 
Mashing at 154F gets me around 1.015 with a standard yeast like US-05. Try mashing at 150-152F if you are going for maximum attenuation. There are even enzymes available that will lower it more. Those are usually for really light beers.

You might check your thermometer calibration. I have to reset mine regularly.
 
My question would be is what % attenuation are you getting? From 1.060 to 1.015 is 75% and and in the range I normally aim for, but 1.050 to 1.015 is only 70%. My thinking is the mash temp should give you a certain percentage of fermentable sugars regardless of OG, thus driving your attenuation %. On the other hand I have found that brewing is rarely that straight forward.

Once again RDWHAHB
 
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