Too dark Irish Red

JeepGuy · 02-19-2006, 10:00 PM

I've made an Irish Red from a recipe I found somewhere on the net and it came out quite a bit darker than I had expected. I'm guessing it has to do with how I steeped the grains. I stirred the grain bag quite a bit trying to prevent it from scorching to the hot surfaces of the brew pot, I'm afraid this may have allowed too much of the grain stuff into the wort. Before I start my next batch, I need to know if stirring the grain bag in the water is a good or bad thing. If it's something that I should avoid, I'll prolly build a device to suspend the bag in the water with out touching the sides and bottom. That way I can avoid releasing extra stuff from the grain bag. Also, I didn't use a thermometer, so it's possible that I had steeped it too hot. Just by sticking my finger in it on several occasions, I don't think it got hot enough to worry about, it never boiled with the grain bag.

As a side note, I think the flavor is great so I'm really not too concerned about this batch I've already made. I'm mostly concerned about future brews.

Any thoughts? Avoid stirring the bag in the wort? I definitely plan to use a thermometer next batch, but does the temperature affect the grains very drastically?

SteveM · 02-19-2006, 10:27 PM

In my experience, any kind of movement of your steeping grain bag will release additional color into the wort. Along with that, you should also get a bit of flavor plus the proteins and resins and so on that aid in head retention. Make a light colored ale is a definite art.

todd_k · 02-19-2006, 10:56 PM

I have read that you should treat the grain bag as if you were making a cup of tea so you should always be raising and lowering it while it is in the brewpot. I just brewed an Irish Red yesterday so I'll let you know how dark it comes out, it didn't look too dark yesterday.

**Pumbaa** · 02-20-2006, 12:20 AM

All my extract brews seem to turn out a bit darker then intended so I asked the guy at the LHBS andhe said that it's not uncommon for extract beers to be darker since you have much more control with the all grain versions. try using the lightest malt you can find and that should help a bit, otherwise you can do like me and move to all grains

KopyKat · 02-20-2006, 12:30 AM

I just put an Irish Red in the primary at 4PM today. Looked a little darker than Killian's which is what I am familiar with but since it is not a Killian's clone, it may just be the correct color. Donno.
Looks like a few of us will be drinking Irish Red soon.

Lou · 02-20-2006, 12:42 AM

i'm making an extract irish red right now, too....it's a little darker than i expected, but it's still boiling (3.5 gallon boil), so it'll get diluted a little bit....
looks good and smells good, though... i hate that i have to wait so long to drink the beers i make...

m_f · 02-20-2006, 12:39 PM

The extract recipes may result in a wide range in color. But usually in my little experience is "darker than expected". The variability is attributed to different deggree of caramelization, efficiency of steeping and variability between DME batches.

I am experimenting a little bit on this lately, because want a full bodied beer, but golden in color. Last saturday I brewed using extra light (to replace the light DME in the original recipe), shortened the boil to 45 min (adjusted bittering hops) and used a full volume boil (again had to consider that to adjust hops).

Steeped grains (crystal and carapils) in the tea making fashion, controling temp at 155...

With all this, the resulting wort was noticeably ligher in color than before. It is fermenting now, so in a couple of week I'll tell if the flavor what I want.

QuietKeith · 02-20-2006, 05:35 PM

I racked my Irish-American Red to the secondary last weekend, and it seems to be about the right color. I used 8 oz. 10L Crystal Malt, 2 oz. Roasted Barley and 2 oz. Biscuit Malt as specialty grains before the boil. That gave a nice ruby-red color. I used extra-light DME which added a brownish tinge, but for the most part it's still red. Once everything settles out it should be pretty close.

(It's Irish-American Red because I used American hops)