Irish Red Ale Dad's Red Ale

I started working on a red ale recipe for my dad, and after trying a few different things from a few different places, I sort of dialed backwards into a recipe that is only slightly off Jamil's Irish Red Ale article in BYO. So it goes.

Dad's Red Ale

5 gallon recipe:

8 pounds of 2-row American Pale Ale Malt
8 ounces of American Crystal 40l
6 ounces of American Crystal 120l
4 ounces of Roasted Barley
2 ounces of Torrified Wheat
1/2 an ounce of Glacier @60 minutes
1/2 an ounce of Glacier @20 minutes
Nottingham Ale Yeast, no starter.

Single-Infusion Mash in at 153 for one hour. Mash out at 170.

Bring to a boil, for 90 minutes.

1/2 an ounce of Glacier at the 60 minute mark, and the other half at the 20 minute mark.

Ferment cool at 65 degrees for two weeks.

Put directly into a bottling bucket, from there, with about 3-4 ounces of priming sugar.

In the bottle, it is drinkable in about two weeks, but better at four or six.

I've oak-aged this once, with bourbon-soaked oak chips, and that was really wonderful, and ended up - with the vanilla spice notes of Hungarian oak and all the caramel malt flavor - tasting like a really nice root beer/craft beer hybrid. Not everyone liked it oaked. (My dad and I sure did!)

This one's for my Dad!

I made it again yesterday, and will be sending it almost all home with him the next time he's down for a weekend.

That looks good. I see a lot of Irish Red recipes without the roasted barley. I think it needs the RB. I use WLP004 (Irish Ale), and I think it works well with the caramel and malty flavor from the grain.

I've used Nottingham for a simple reason: It makes the final cost of the brew less than 25 dollars, and the results are very tasty and crowd-pleasing.

I tried Windsor but it didn't dry up enough, and it tasted heavy. I also have used Safale Us-05 and it comes out really drinkable, but not as good as Nottingham.

I'll be brewing this tomorrow. Will update with my thoughts. Real excited for this!