Red Ale Experiment

So this Saturday I started brewing my favorite beer, a red ale. With some help at the LHBS I think I started with a pretty good list of ingredients.

Then much to my delight I read an article about adding cinnoman to red ales and that it adds a certain spring time quality to the ale.

So as I added my aroma hops I added 2 tsps of cinnoman. Then I got to thinking, what would go great with this beer? Vanilla ice cream. Then I thought, why not add vanilla to the beer.

So I'm off to buy some beans, soak them in some 16 yo scotch I got for my birthday and rack everything over the bean/scotch mixture.

So here are my ingredients so far. let me know what you think.

6.6 lbs of Golden light LME
1lb roasted crytal malt
1/2 lb chocolate malt
1oz UK goldings (bittering) 5.9%
1oz Us Goldings (bittering) 4.8%
1oz fuggle (aroma) 4.2%
2 tsps cinnoman

Planned additions
2 vanilla beans and the 2-3 oz of Glenlivit scotch that they have soaked in for 3 days.

Let me know what you think!

I think I'm gonna peer poach your recipe! I probably won't do the vanilla/scotch but none the less it looks pretty good to me! (not that i'd really know)

CannibalAJ said:

I think I'm gonna peer poach your recipe! I probably won't do the vanilla/scotch but none the less it looks pretty good to me! (not that i'd really know)

Click to expand...

Proud to be poached! Well let me know when yours is done how it turns out.

What was your degree of roasting on the crystal malt?

It is 120L rosted crystal malt, anything beyong that I don't know. LHBS suggested for the red.

Bottled this batch on Wednesday last week. Had an issue during the primary fermenting where fermentation just stopped. I couldn't figure our why it went from 42 to 20 and stopped. So I boiled up 1lb of corn sugar and added it to the secondary. It then proceeded to bubble for 7 days. Added the vanilla and scotch that same day. I'm going to wait till next Wednesday the 11th and try one and see how it is carbonating/tasting.

I like the cinnamon! I recently reworked my recipe for red ale, and I think I might add some cinnamon sticks to my boil to add some nice flavor
tell me what you think.

1 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
12 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine
8 oz roasted barley
4 oz Special B
7.5 LB pale malt extract
1.5 pounds light brown sugar (carmalized)
perle(8% alfa) 60m
opal( 6.5% alfa) 30m

and possibly some cinnamon sticks ^^

What are prevailing thoughts about 3-6 oz of black Carafa II in this beer? I recently had a good red that I halved the amount of roasted malt and subbed (about 1 to 2 ratio) Carafa II and dry hopped it with an ounce of citra and an ounce of Simcoe. Tasted real black at first out of keg but mature nicely (as to be expected when drinking from keg two days after transfer from secondary).

FYI: I make 6~6.5 gallon bathes and split batch between two kegs. One gets about 4~4.5 gallons and the second gets about 2 gallons. I usually dry hop the more full keg and cold crash the smaller one and force carb. After smaller keg pops I put on second keg with dry hops. I get to really taste the green beer and the mature beer this way plus can compare it dry hop v no dry hop. What I learned last time was not to make a red to dark for warm weather drinking.

Thanks in advance for any insight or thoughts.

Popped one open last night, after 12 days in the bottle. Good head, lasted 3 minutes, smooth, light taste, vanilla and scotch left a sweet oak flavor on my palate. I'm hoping with time that it builds a bit more body to it. My thoughts would be to add a Saaz hop to the boil and dry hop to add a bit more nose.

All in all, my second favorite homebrew.