Spices for an irish red style ale

Hey everyone. With my oatmeal stout ready for bottling, we are pursuing an Irish Red ale as our next venture. With the help of my LBS I've modified an all-grain recipe to use DME, and some specialty grains. Sadly I don't have the recipe with me now to post it, but I'll put it up later.

To add some accent to the flavor of the end result I'm thinking of including three or four ground pods of cardamom, some assorted citrus zest (either orange or lemon), and thyme. I'm still toying with the amounts.

Any suggestions?

Here is the base recipe in the meantime:
http://www.brew-monkey.com/recipes/html/joesirishred.htm

We've replaced the Maris Otter with 7lbs of light DME (a bit more alcohol). We've increased the bittering hops to 2oz, and the aroma to 1oz. The yeast is going to be Wyeast instead of white labs; everything else is staying the same.

Any suggestions?

For my taste, the zest isn't appropriate for the style. Neither, really are the spices. I'd be interested in tasting the beer with the spices, and I'd be interested in tasting it with the zest. I'm not sure I'd be interested in tasting it with both. . . but I've certainly been surprised before!

For a while now I've been interested in brewing an Irish red-ale and then oaking it. You may have re-sparked my curiosity!

I'm not really digging the zest. But experimentation is important...so why not try it, right? I'm not really familiar with the flavor of the spices used, but I'd be more inclined to try an irish red with spices before citrus zest.

Thanks for the thoughts guys! We're using quite a bit of malt so its probably going to be less of a proper Irish red and more of an Irish Red "Inspired" beer Most of the spices are ones that both give citrus notes, and would have been available in Ireland. I was hoping the citrus-notes would help calm down the alcohol flavor a bit. I figured that the citrus zest on top would really help brighten it up. For now the tentative spice list is:
Rose hips (citrus plus some extra bright red color)
Thyme (citrus, plus it was used prior to hops to both bitter and give aroma to ales)
Citrus zest (citrus)
Cardamom (citrus notes with a bit of spice)
and Ginger root (brighten everything up, adding earlier to dull the nose a bit and just add some background)

And I don't plan to add any more. I may remove some still just to see where they stand. Please feel free to add your thoughts. Like was mentioned, I grasp the process and now I kind of want to play around with it and see how the spices shine through

that reminds me, I haven't had a curry in a while...