Beer is good but missing something

Hey all thanks for all the help so far on the forum. My Brew Buddy and I made an Irish Red that we modified from a recipe I found in Home brewing for Dummies. It is only our third batch, our first being a Kolsh Kit from the local brew supply store that turned out ok after it bottle conditioned for about 2 months(when we first tried it it had a bad aftertaste which has mellowed out now.) the second is a stout that is still aging in secondary until the end of this month so not sure abut it yet.
This Rd though turned out very good, in a way almost to good I gave it to some people I know locally that home brew to see if they could tell me what was "missing" but the feed back from all 3 of them was "Well it is better than anything we have made so we aren't sure we should tell you to change anything.

So maybe I can get some help here. Again it is an Irish Red and I think it needs to be thicker have a deeper flavor, I dont have my brew notes right in front of me but here is the basics

Steeping for 45 min
1lb Crystal Malt 60
1/8 lb Black Malt

Boil
6lbs Light malt extract 1/2 Coopers half Alexanders I believe
1Lb light dry malt extract
2 oz Fuggles hops added in 1/2 oz increments throughout the process
1/2 Kent Goldings at flame out

White Labs Irish Ale Yeast

Primary for 6 days
Secondary for 3 weeks


Again the flavor is good, no after taste, color is good as well could go a little darker maybe. I was thinking of adding another 3lbs of liquid malt but I don't want to screw anything up since this batch turned out so good.Any ideas are appreciated and if you are in the Salt Lake area I will even arrange a taste test perhaps

I found that adding something that adds a bit more body/head proteins to the beer gives it more "oomph." Try using carapils, or even flaked oats to your steeping. You'll find mouth feel goes a long way to improving beers. I used to always through a half pound minimum of carapil in all my beers.

i second reverend revvy.
another interesting one you can try is rye. gives a sweet flavor in beer.

Rivenin said:

another interesting one you can try is rye. gives a sweet flavor in beer.

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I was trying to think of all the other ones that do the same thing.

This Red though turned out very good, in a way almost to good

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Is there such a thing as beer that is "too good," and if it is already awesome, why mess with it, just note to add some carapils to add body the next time you brew it! :fro:

Cara-aroma or aromatic malt will give a wonderful malty flavor. Biscut malt will add some toast to it, adding roasted barley will give me a nice dry roasty flavor and adding rye will add a dry spice. Black Malt is used strictly for color, use chocolate or roasted barley.

Basically, red is ALL about malt, drop the aroma hops, they are not to style at all. Add hops at the beginning of boil only for bittering, this will also make the malt pop out more, also you might want to play with dropping the IBUs a bit and see if you like those results more.

Eventually, if you get to PM or AG brewing you can also play with various mixes of base malts.

Rivenin said:

i second reverend revvy.
another interesting one you can try is rye. gives a sweet flavor in beer.

Click to expand...

Rye styles are my hands-down favorite. (Sipping one right now, in fact.) Mine tend not to be sweet, necessarily, but they always have a spicy "zing". I do think that if you had a sweet recipe, adding rye would balance it out depending on what you like.

You can add more body without changing the beer too much otherwise by adding 4-8 oz of maltodextrin powder.

I apologize for the way late reply guys, I have been way busy and didn't get to brew for a while, but I am back. Took the advice and in September I made a second batch of this stuff and added 1lb of Carapils, (I either misread Revvys post of thought ahh more is better) anyway the flavor is unchanged still very good beer and it thickened it up quite a bit. So much so I am going to cut it back to 1/2 lb for the next batch.

Thanks for your help guys.