how much carared?

So I planned to make a Vienna lager this afternoon and thought I would make it into more of a marzen with some carared I picked up. How much carared should I add to give it a nice red color. The recipe I was going to brew is as follows.

20 lbs Vienna malt
2lbs carared
3 oz mt hood @60 min

10.5 gal batch
OG 1.050
IBU ~28

WLP 820 Oktoberfest lager

The more 'red' I can make this brew, the better. Should I add more carared or less? Thoughts?

Perhaps you should give the BeerSmith program a try. It will let you see what each grain contributes to color.

In a 10 gallon batch, using 20 lbs of Weyermann Vienna malt as a base, 2 lbs of Carared will give the final beer a 7.1 SRM color. Oktoberfest/Marzen range is 7-14. I would shoot for more around 11-12.

You would have to use about 6 lbs of Carared and cut back the Vienna to 15 lbs to hit the OG numbers. That would give you a color around 10.5.

You might be better off using 2 lbs of CaraMunich II along with your Carared and 16 lbs of Vienna. That hits 11.7

The 3 oz of Mt. Hood may give you too bitter a beer. Try using around 1.75 oz for a 90 minute boil.

Another choice would be to use 18 lbs of Vienna, 2 lbs of Carared and 4 oz. of Carafa Special II (dehusked)

That will give you the color (11.1) with very little flavor contribution.

Wayne, thank you for the quick response. What you said makes sense but I was not intending to make an Oktoberfest, specifically. Only to try out carared in a Vienna lager that I have made before to see what it does to the beer. I had put my numbers into beersmith, I just thought that carared might not follow a malts traditional SRM qualities. I ended up putting only 2 lbs of carared in the mash because I was more worried about making to sweet of a lager for my tastes. If I do not get the red color I am looking for, that is the lesser of two evils compared to cloying. I may post a few pics of the finished beer so other brewers can get an idea of what carared does to the color.

Carared is just a name used by Weyermann for their 24L caramel malt.

Just as Caramunich II is their version of 60L Caramel.

The flavors are somewhat different than an English Crystal or Belgium Caramel malt, but they can be calculated the same way for color contribution.

On Weyermann's website, they offer a recipe for an amber lager that is 50/50 Vienna and Caramunich II. That recipe was designed by Ray Daniels.

Give it a try sometime.

I did not know that. Thanks for the info about carared.