Need Help Putting the Red in My Irish Red Ale

I've brewed an Irish Red three times in the last two years and everytime that deep red color is missing. I've searched and researched (pun alert!), read articles in BYO, Zymurgy, and the forums. I've tweaked my recipe three times now, and still that deep red color is missing. Here's my most recent recipe and picture of how the brew came out. If anyone has some tips on tweaking it to capture a beautiful red hue, please share.

Recipe Specifications
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Batch Size (fermenter): 5.25 gal
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 13.7 SRM

Ingredients:
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Amt Name %/IBU
8 lbs Golden Promise (Simpsons) (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.1 %
1 lbs Biscuit (Dingemans) (22.5 SRM) Grain 10.3 %
8.0 oz Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 5.1 %
4.0 oz Roasted Barley (Briess) (300.0 SRM) Grain 2.6 %

I thought Irish Reds used melanoiden malt to get the colour. That's what the recipe I used last week called for, and the other one I have ("Raging Irish Red" from this site) does as well.

That being said, I have a set of four of those exact same mugs!

I agree with sly, my "raging Irish red" has the deep color and is delish to boot...

Raging red is definitely a knockout in the flavor department, nice red color also

Looking at that raging red recipe it looks like both caraaroma (130.0 SRM) and melanoiden malt (20.0 SRM) were used to get that color. I've only used melanoiden once in a German helles and didn't care for the flavor. It's worth another shot though, i've obviously struck out with the roasted barley and crystal 40.

Killians on the left raging red on the right,need light for the red of the raging red to really shine through
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1443060474.393371.jpg

I made the raging red once; it was killer for taste (on my list to repeat). But had similar results as pic above in that it was too dark IMO. A slight tweak and it would be perfect.

Check out the ragging red recipe. I think it is the melanoidian and caraaroma that brings the color

Btaz said:

Check out the ragging red recipe. I think it is the melanoidian and caraaroma that brings the color

Click to expand...

TLDR: A day late and a dollar short.

I used no Caraaroma in my red I have fermenting now.

*shrug*

I'm actually curious how this gets resolved because I want to take a two hearted ale clone and turn it into a red ipa hopefully with a similar flavor as the original recipe

I've always gotten the red in my reds using roasted barley. Isn't that the traditional Irish way? North American reds (read: ambers) lean more on the crystal malts instead, if I'm not mistaken. A true "Irish" red is supposed to have a hint of roasted barley character that is out of place in North American versions.

I say carefully amp up the roasted barley.

kombat said:

I've always gotten the red in my reds using roasted barley. Isn't that the traditional Irish way? North American reds (read: ambers) lean more on the crystal malts instead, if I'm not mistaken. A true "Irish" red is supposed to have a hint of roasted barley character that is out of place in North American versions.

I say carefully amp up the roasted barley.

Click to expand...

Amp up to how much for a 5 gallon batch? I used 4oz, should I double it? Some stout recipes have as little as 12oz. How much do you use in your recipe? If you have a photo of your beer can you post it?

I usually boil 2 gallons of last runnings & 1gallon of first runnings down to about 1-1.5 gallons in kettle before adding the rest of the wort for a 5 gallon batch.

have you heard of red x malt? Its a base malt thats supposedly formulated for red ales. Its pretty nice, ive tried it for ~70% of my malt bill before but supposedly you can go up to 100%...

JayDubWill said:

Amp up to how much for a 5 gallon batch? I used 4oz, should I double it? Some stout recipes have as little as 12oz. How much do you use in your recipe? If you have a photo of your beer can you post it?

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I meant to check my recipe, but I forgot. I believe it uses about 5-6 oz of roasted barley, and that gives it a nice, crimson hue.

To the OP's question, I have never had an issue with a deep red color (which I was always told comes from the roasted barley). I use roughly the same percentage as you, but mine is the Crisp roasted barley (500 SRM) versus the 300SRM variety you listed. I think this one tweak would make a big difference. When I get home I'll dig up photos and my grain bill for you.

^That has a 100 watt light shining through it to show clarity and color.


Grain bill:

71% Maris Otter
24% Vienna
3% Crystal 120
2% Crisp Roasted Barley (500 SRM)

I just use munich with a touch of black patent. I did this recently to redden a raspberry saison.

View attachment 1443553053500.jpg

eyedoctodd said:

To the OP's question, I have never had an issue with a deep red color (which I was always told comes from the roasted barley). I use roughly the same percentage as you, but mine is the Crisp roasted barley (500 SRM) versus the 300SRM variety you listed. I think this one tweak would make a big difference. When I get home I'll dig up photos and my grain bill for you.

Click to expand...

I think you've nailed my issue. I was recently on Briess' web site and first noticed they have a 300 SRM roasted barley (what i've been using), and a 500 SRM black barley. My LHBS doesn't carry the Crisp roasted barley so i've been using the Briess thinking it was the same. :smack:

Both your's and rhys333's beers look fantastic, that's the color i'm going after. The only thing left to do is change my recipe and brew again!

I stupidly thought CaraRed would make it red. I failed to look at the 20L rating. I'm a noob

Here is the grain/hops I used in my Irish Red:

7 lbs. Maris Otter
- 3 lbs. 2-Row Pale
- 8 oz. CaraRed
- 8 oz. Caramel 60L
- 4 oz. Roasted Barley

Hops
- 1/2 oz. Nugget
- 1/2 oz. Fuggle

Hmm, just a few of us that use melanoiden...

I will have to take a pic in a few weeks when my Irish red is ready to crack out of a bottle.

eyedoctodd said:

^That has a 100 watt light shining through it to show clarity and color.


Grain bill:

71% Maris Otter
24% Vienna
3% Crystal 120
2% Crisp Roasted Barley (500 SRM)

Click to expand...

eyedoc - Great looking beer. I'm doing a red soon and my recipe is really close to yours. Regular 2-Row instead MO, and 80L instead of 120L. Otherwise exactly the same, even the percentages. Weird.

Anyway, question for you - do you use BeerSmith or some other brewing software and, if so, what did your calculated SRM come out to for this beer? Just curious.

Thanks and by the way, I still use your bucket heater on the timer method for my strike water. To this day one of the best things I ever did for my brewing setup.

Cheers.

Hey NathPowe -

I'm linking a screenshot of my Beersmith page for this recipe in case you have other questions but it calculates to 14.1 SRM.

I actually usually don't go with the timer anymore. I built a second temp controller (first one is on ferm fridge) for my HLT. It gets me bang on the temp I need and I don't have to worry about a time change in case I get off work a little early. And given the thermal mass of 12+ gallons of water in a kettle, I figure I'm not wasting much electricity holding it there for potentially a couple of extra hours.

So the bucket heater now gets plugged into a wired-up one of these

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QIE0VWE/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Happy brewing!

You could try to throw in a little Beetroot in last 10 or 5 min of the boil. I have not tried it myself, so I would go conservative on how much you use. Experiment till you get the color with no Beet taste. There are some threads on here about it. You will get a really blood red color without getting the earthy taste in your beer. A brewery in town does it with a Red IPA.

- I am going to give that a try someday to an IPA!!

-Dogman

MI_Dogman said:

You could try to throw in a little Beetroot in last 10 or 5 min of the boil. I have not tried it myself, so I would go conservative on how much you use. Experiment till you get the color with no Beet taste. There are some threads on here about it. You will get a really blood red color without getting the earthy taste in your beer. A brewery in town does it with a Red IPA.

- I am going to give that a try someday to an IPA!!

-Dogman

Click to expand...

That might be interesting for a Halloween themed beer!