First attempt at building a recipe. Thoughts? Advice?

This is my first try building a recipe with BeerSmith, and I'm looking for some feedback. I'm basing a beer on a concept of working with two colors: Red and Purple. So I thought - although this seems weird - an irish red ale with lavender. Here is what I've compiled.


Yield: 5 Gal
1 lbs 0.4 oz Biscuit Malt
1 lbs 0.4 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
4.9 oz Special B Malt
4 lbs 13.7 oz Light Dry Extract
8.0 oz Honey
1 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 65.0 min
1 oz Perle [8.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min
Irish Ale (Wyeast Labs #1084)

I am thinking about adding 1-2 Tbsp of Grasso or culinary lavender during last 10 min of boil, and/or dry hopping in secondary. Thoughts on this would be great.

Est Original Gravity: 1.048 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.011 SG
Bitterness: 25.9 IBUs
Est Color: 15.0 SRM

Take this with a grain of salt since I've only had one beer with lavender in it, but any detectable amounts of lavender that get through seem to taste or smell soap-ish.

An alternative idea to keep with the purple theme would be to use some purple maize as an adjunct. Certainly not as bold as putting lavender in, but then again I like to keep things simple.

I personally don't think of lavender as an aroma or flavor that would come through very well with beer. Blackberries would be a natural choice for purple, and they play very well with beer.

As for the rest of the recipe, I would ease off the biscuit malt. Try 4 oz at first, and you can always dial it in over time. Biscuit and aromatic malt are pretty assertive. Also, in general I'd probably shoot for a somewhat simpler grain bill if I were trying to highlight an unusual ingredient. Special B, for example, is also quite assertive. You have it in a reasonable amount for a normal beer, but it would probably obscure a delicate flavor like lavender. If you want to make up for the omission of a malt to maintain your SRM, try adding an oz or two of a highly kilned malt like chocolate.

Looks like too much biscuit and crystal 40. Irish reds use roasted barley to get that nice red color. Just a couple of ounces to get the SRM where you want it. I would put all of the specialty grains in the 5-8 oz range and add enough roasted barley to get the color you want.

I'm not sure you need the honey either, but it might help counteract the unfermentables in the extract. Sugar would be a cheaper option for that.

I've never brewed with lavender, but I think it could be interesting. It is used mostly in soaps and lotions so many people associate it with that. I have made cucumber lavender water and it was delicious.

I guess this doesn't really mater, but why all the weird measurement amounts? Plus or minus 0.4 oz of grain won't make any difference in the beer, and it seems like it would be easier to work with round numbers for measuring and calculations.

Thanks for the advice! As for the measurements, I am playing around with BeerSmith for the first time, and little adjustments in certain areas would automatically change other ingredients to very specific and weird oz numbers. I'll try the measuring down of specialty grains and malts, and post an edit for any more feedback - I want this to be tasty! Thanks again!