Color me red

I can't seem to figure this out.

What grain(s) do I need to use to get a beer to have a "reddish" color?
I just keep getting shades of amber.

Carared would be a good one. Ive used that here.

Raspberry Wheat Beer

Carared, munich malt, roasted barley all give red color. Carared alone will give you an orange color, in my experience.

I'm pretty sure there is a Killians Red clone somewhere on here that you could gather up some info to help you out.

I just asked this question at the LHBS and they told me to try some roasted barley.

A few ounces of roasted barley in the last 15 minutes of the mash is a good option. Carared is good too but it can add more crystal malt than you might want. A few ounces of skinned, diced beats in the last 10 of the boil is not bad either. Munich malt or melanoidin are also both known to give red hues.

This is pretty much everything I learned while trying to do a double red or red IPA.

I think commercial beers that look red use food coloring. You can get a dark amber color; it might look reddish in certain light, but not like fire engine red.

I'm really happy with the color of an American Red I just dry hopped.

My malt was:
85.7% - 9.00 lbs. American Pale "2-row"
6.0% - 0.63 lbs. CaraHell
6.0% - 0.63 lbs. CaraMunich
2.4% - 0.25 lbs. Pale Chocolate Malt

It might be a touch darker than ideal, but going down to 3 oz of pale chocolate would probably fix that.

An ounce or two of hibiscus is a good choice if you don't mind cheating:http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2011/03/jasmine-hibiscus-ale-tasting.html

For me, 2 lbs of carared in a 5 gallon amber ale did not give a red color at all, like beeber above stated. I've used 1.5lbs of english crystal 55L and that was as close to red as I've got without adding darker malts. Of course, like Boy said above, that may be more crystal than you want in a beer.

evanos said:

I just asked this question at the LHBS and they told me to try some roasted barley.

Click to expand...

Just don't use too much. I made an Irish Red yesterday with 4oz of roasted barley and it made the wort way too dark. It also had some Crystal 40L and Crystal 120L in there. When I used Crystal 120L before, I got it a little light on color....thought I'd cut it with 40L and use roasted barley...but it's now too dark.

On a future batch, I might try just Crystal 60L and 2 or 3oz of roasted barley.

Special B malt can give your beer a reddish color as well.