American Pale Ale Red Chair NWPA clone

10lbs 2 row
1lb Munich
1lb Pilsner
1lb Crystal 60L
0.5lb Carapils
0.5lb Carastan

Mash @ 152*F

1.5oz Centennial (9.1%AA) @ 60
1.5oz Centennial (9.1%AA) @ 15
2oz Cascade @ 0

OG 1.060
FG 1.012

WLP005 with a starter

My tasting notes:
Mouthfeel and bitterness was dead on, as was color.
My verison had a little more aroma and not as much hop flavor as Red Chair NWPA

To be closer to Red Chair
Need to mash a bit higher.
Need to ferment higher (I fermented at 62*F) to get some esters.

Very drinkable, and very similar to Deschutes Red Chair NWPA

Thanks AZ! I was looking at making a clone of this and stumbled across your post. What made you choose 005 over 002 or 007? I was leaning towards 007 myself. I think Deschutes ferments this at 65, so you were close. I was also thinking about a hop addition for flavor in the 7-25 minute timeframe, perhaps half of the Cascade at 15 and the rest in the whirlpool? Also they do a 95 minute boil and from what I read, doing anything less than 90 with all grain can cause some differences you might want to account for. Can't get Deschutes in the DC area so I have to wait until I head out to San Diego again to get myself a few bottles. Anyhow, once I can fit this into my brew schedule I will let you know what I change up and how I think it comes out. Thanks for sharing!

I used WLP005 because it's what I had lying around and their house strain is supposedly close to Ringwood (Wyeast 1187) which is close to WLP005.

I've heard others say their strain is close to 1098, so 007 should work fine.

I actually liked the additional aroma in my version, but you could certainly move some of the cascade up a bit.

Good luck with the brew and let me know how it turns out!

this could be up next. drinking one now and I likey!

I've been hunting for a good IPA the wife could enjoy on maternity leave and this may be it. She loves Red Chair (finally made it here in Chicago) and the recipe sounds pretty convincing. I'll let folks know in a few months!

I was thinking I would try this recipe this weekend. Has anyone else had any experience or advice to add?

Hey everyone, thanks for working out details on Red Chair - it is definitely a top favorite!
Does anyone have suggestions on doing this as an extract or partial mash? I'd love this to be my next batch, but it'll have to be an extract based recipe - which I can't seem to find. Any help would be very much appreciated!

jkgrove said:

Hey everyone, thanks for working out details on Red Chair - it is definitely a top favorite!
Does anyone have suggestions on doing this as an extract or partial mash? I'd love this to be my next batch, but it'll have to be an extract based recipe - which I can't seem to find. Any help would be very much appreciated!

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You could probably just sub out the 2-row for 6 pounds of the lightest DME you can get, then do a mini-mash for the other 4 pounds. If you get into darker extracts, you don't really know what combination of malts you are getting. I've never done extract conversions (or extract brews, for that matter) but I know you're kind of wandering in the dark if you want to match a certain AG profile.

jaminman said:

I've been hunting for a good IPA the wife could enjoy on maternity leave and this may be it. She loves Red Chair (finally made it here in Chicago) and the recipe sounds pretty convincing. I'll let folks know in a few months!

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I hope she's not nursing!

kind of dumb process question, but when you add the 2oz of cascades after the boil is complete are you leaving the hop bag in the brew pot until it is chilled and moved to the fermenter? if not how long are you leaving the hops in the kettle for?

oscarjets said:

kind of dumb process question, but when you add the 2oz of cascades after the boil is complete are you leaving the hop bag in the brew pot until it is chilled and moved to the fermenter? if not how long are you leaving the hops in the kettle for?

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I don't use a hop bag, so they end up getting chilled and added to the fermenter.

12 Thumbs up for this brew .... literally.
Family called a few months ago and said they were coming in town for Spring Break. I had a 5 gal keg of this ready when they got here. 7 family members and my wife and I polished off the entire keg in 1 night.
I bought a 6er of Red Chair to do a taste test and this brew won 7-2.

Key points -
21 day ferm was spot on. I did 21 days in primary and 7 days in the keg at 38f while doing a slow force carb. Any earlier and I don't think it would have been ready.
My ferm was 65f and turned out great. So I bet if you're between 62-65 it won't make a huge difference. (Used a chest freezer ferm chamber with Johnson temp controls)

Other than that I didn't change a thing and this is now in our rotation brew book. Excellent work and thanks a bunch!!

Thanks for the feedback!

Glad everyone enjoyed it.

I just racked my 3 gallon BIAB over to secondary after 2 weeks and the sample is delicious. I don't rack to secondary often but wanted to reduce headspace and get it over to a more airtight container for the next 10 days while out of town.

I'm pretty excited about this one. Color is very close. Doesn't seem to have quite the bitterness or the citrus(?) as Red Chair but I think the dry hopping will definitely add to the character. Can't wait!

Edit: Pic was from brew day.

I just opened end my first bottles of this beer and its great! It's was my 3rd homebrew and I came up short on the OG. As a result I boiled about 30 extra min. In the end it's a bit sweet smelling and tasting, an everyone loves it.

I have all the ingredients ready and can't wait to brew my Red Chair.....Any pointers?

DustyBrew said:

I have all the ingredients ready and can't wait to brew my Red Chair.....Any pointers?

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I'd say follow the OP instructions and adjust subsequent brews to your liking. It's a very solid very popular brew around my house and depending on how you like it, easy to adjust hop flavor and aroma in future batches.

Try and hit mash in and ferm temps, do a 21 day primary, and you'll end up with a smooth NWPA copper colored brew around the 6% mark give or take your system's efficiency and temp variation.

(Maybe it goes without saying, but I almost always use a yeast starter as I have a stir plate, so I'm sure that helps too if you have one).

Have fun brewing up this awesome NWPA :rockin:

DustyBrew said:

I have all the ingredients ready and can't wait to brew my Red Chair.....Any pointers?

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This was my second attempt at all grain, first BIAB and first brew in my new kettle so I don't really have any pointers other than go for it. I just took my last sample, dry hopped a few days ago and I'm ready to bottle. The sample is delicious. My attempt seems to be a little off from the original but still a very good beer so far.

Can't wait to take a few of these out to Cape Lookout for birthday camping trip.

Enjoy!

Picked up the ingredients for Big Brew tomorrow. Followed the recipe except using 1187 since I had a voucher for a free Wy'East packet.

Very excited!

So should I mash at 152 or higher?

I was thinking of using Pacman wyeast 1764. Nice mild fruit and neutral strain. I have mashed and ready to use. What do fellow brewers think?

red chair is definitely in my top 5 microbrews. gonna try this in a few months.

SilverZero said:

You could probably just sub out the 2-row for 6 pounds of the lightest DME you can get, then do a mini-mash for the other 4 pounds. If you get into darker extracts, you don't really know what combination of malts you are getting.

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This is spot on by the way. when converting to extracts, use the same extract as the base malt, and let your specialty grains determine color and adjunct flavor. I'd go with a light pilsen extract.

If no one knows this, deschutes posts the recipes to many of their brews on their website. However they dont include proportions or a hop schedule. Here is the Red chair clone on their website.

Recipe type: All grain
Batch size: 5 U.S. gallons
Original gravity: 1.060-1.065
Final gravity: 1.015-1.019
Boil time: 95 minutes
Fermentation temp: 65° F
Yeast type: English Ale

MALT
NW 2-row Pale Malt
Crystal Malt
Carastan
Carapils
Munich
Pilsner

HOPS
Cascade
Centennial

Here it is after 14 days in the bottle. Really good beer, probably my favorite batch to date. Not the best pic, actually pretty clear after 1 day in the fridge. I might as well start version 2.0 tomorrow because these aren't going to last long.

Ended up a gallon short in my pre-boil and overshot the OG by 10 points. Still learning my new system.

Hops weren't noticeable in hydro sample, but should still be an excellent summer brew. Thanks for the awesome recipe! Can't wait to brew it again once I get to know the new brewery.

I just brewed this today. I have high hopes.

Can't believe no one has tried this recipe in the last three weeks. I kegged my batch today. My first thought was I forgot to dry hop and figured I would just dry hop in the keg. Then I checked the recipe and saw it didn't have any dry hops in it. The hydrometer sample really surprised me - beautiful color, not much aroma, but a mouthful of flavor. It will probably be two or three weeks before there is room in my beer fridge (only holds two kegs) so it will be a while before I get to drink it cold and carbonated, but it promises to be great. Thanks for the recipe.

DirtyOldDuck said:

Can't believe no one has tried this recipe in the last three weeks. I kegged my batch today. My first thought was I forgot to dry hop and figured I would just dry hop in the keg. Then I checked the recipe and saw it didn't have any dry hops in it. The hydrometer sample really surprised me - beautiful color, not much aroma, but a mouthful of flavor. It will probably be two or three weeks before there is room in my beer fridge (only holds two kegs) so it will be a while before I get to drink it cold and carbonated, but it promises to be great. Thanks for the recipe.

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I'm savoring my last 4 bottles. It's really good. I dry hopped the last 3 days with some but next time I think I'll skip it.

iamperplexed said:

I dry hopped the last 3 days with some but next time I think I'll skip it.

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Thanks. I was thinking of dry hopping in the keg, but I think I am going to try it without this time.

DirtyOldDuck said:

Thanks. I was thinking of dry hopping in the keg, but I think I am going to try it without this time.

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It's not bad by any means. Just a little nose hit mostly. Last one I had I decided I would skip it next time but who knows, I might miss it.

Gonna make 10g more of this soon. They only had it in stock for a couple weeks this spring.

But, it is cheaper to make, and I'd rather have it on tap at home

Thanks for this, AZ.

I'm going to try this as my first all grain brew... We'll see how I do. I'm going to add an additional pound of 2-row to increase the OG... I'll post how it turns out.

How much initial water did you use in the wort? I want to know how much h20 I should expect to boil down...

H2o requirements all depends on your system so you might have to tweak it a little. I do 10 gal batches and here's the water measurements I used to make this.


Mash In/Strike Water:
8.75 gal (temps depend on the efficiency of your mash tun)
Mine is around 164f to get 151f

Sparge:
5.7 gal at 175 to 180f

Hopefully someone that's done a 5 gal run can post their water profile.

hallucinaut said:

How much initial water did you use in the wort? I want to know how much h20 I should expect to boil down...

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ThomperYT said:

H2o requirements all depends on your system so you might have to tweak it a little.

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Yeah, it's gonna depend on your system.

I mash with 5 gallons, lose about 2.2 to absorption/MLT loss, so my first runnings are ~2.8 gallons. I sparge with ~4 gallons so my pre-boil volume is ~6.8. Boil-off to about 5.5 gallons, and wind up with ~5.2 gallons into the fermenter.

Sweet, thanks. This is my first time using beersmith as well, I didn't quite understand everything that I needed to set in order to get exact calculation on how much water I should be using, but I have a better understanding now.

AZ, you recommend mashing higher than 155* which is what you said you mashed at, so I was thinking I should set my mash temp to 160* in beersmith... is that a good idea?

hallucinaut said:

Sweet, thanks. This is my first time using beersmith as well, I didn't quite understand everything that I needed to set in order to get exact calculation on how much water I should be using, but I have a better understanding now.

AZ, you recommend mashing higher than 155* which is what you said you mashed at, so I was thinking I should set my mash temp to 160* in beersmith... is that a good idea?

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I mashed at 152*F, but would recommend ~155*F. 160*F is a bit too high. I try to never go above 158*F, but for this recipe, I think 155*F would be good.

Sweet, I'm going to brew this up today, just returned from my local HBS and got my ingredients to do a scaled down, 3 gallon brew. My brew kettle is only 5 gallons so I guess I'm stuck doing 3 gallon brews until I get a bigger one.

This will be my first all grain, so I'm pretty excited.

And also, one difference is that I am using s-04 yeast instead. We'll see how it goes..

How did you brew night go hallucinaut?

It's still going ha!

I messed up... not quite sure where.. I was supposed to end up with 4.4 gallons before boil and boil down to 3 gallons, but I ended up with 5 gallons before boil and had to boil out 2 gallons to get down to 3 gallons...

So my boil ended up lasting about 120 mins. That will probably effect my end product unfortunately, I guess next time I'll use a little less water in my mash than beersmith says.

Anyway my wort is chilling in an ice bath at the moment, it will be another 20-30 mins is my guess.

I brewed this several weeks ago and just tapped the keg on it. I did make a few modifications, so I'll list those first:

AZ_IPA said:

10lbs 2 row
1lb Munich
1lb Pilsner
1lb Crystal 60L
0.5lb Carapils
0.5lb Carastan

Mash @ 152*F

1.5oz Centennial (9.1%AA) @ 60
1.5oz Centennial (9.1%AA) @ 15
2oz Cascade @ 0

OG 1.060
FG 1.012

WLP005 with a starter

Click to expand...

In the grain bill, I used 12oz of Crystal 60L and 12oz of Carastan. I don't remember why I did that now, but I did.

For the hops, on my initial tasting of Red Chair, I thought I picked up more Centennial, so I split the 15 minute addition and flame-out addition 50/50 Cascade and Centennial.

I used Wyeast 1968 rather than WLP005.

So, here are my notes...

Color: As close to dead-on as I can pick out with my eye

Aroma: Initially it was a little more present, but a bit more subdued/different in the actual aroma because of my increased Centennial/decreased Cascade. So, I'll definitely go back to the original hops schedule on the next batch.

Flavor: Again, a little more subdued due to the Centennial/Cascade change. Definitely less pronounced than Red Chair. The malt flavor seemed very close, though I feel like Red Chair may have a little more initial sweetness. As I said above, I'll go back to the original hops schedule next time as the Centennial definitely changed the overall hop flavor. For the sweetness, I'll probably go back to the original amounts of Crystal 60L. Also, as the OP said, mashing a little higher might help too.

I fermented about 68F or so and I didn't detect much in the way of esters. I see Wyeast says 1968 will produce some additional fruitiness at 70-74F. I'm not sure if I want much of that, but I might let it run around 70-72F next time and see.

I'm still undecided on dry-hopping. I think the aroma level was where it should be and maybe just didn't seem as "bright" because of the increase in Centennial and decrease in Cascade.

Great feedback, thanks!