Beer-X Holiday Red

Okay, so I've been putting together this recipe for a holiday red ale. Please take a look and tell me what you think.

I came up with the concept and brewed something like it at a local brewpub a year and a half ago, but the recipe formulation was done by the in-house brewmaster. Only thing I really remember is that he used a blend of some Belgian yeast, and a weizen yeast. I currently have a saison and a weizen fermenting away now, and so plan to use the yeast cakes from those.

The concept is a heavy spicy red ale, but without adding any spice. It gets all its spice from the yeast, hops, and maybe malt.

This will be a 5gallon batch, and I'm shooting for 8-9% abv.


Beer-X:

In the mash:
7# Liquid LME
3# Munich
1.5# Rye
1# Crystal 90L
.25# Carafa Special III
Dry:
1# Clear candy sugar
.5# Light DME (maybe?)

2oz. Tettnanger @60min
1oz. Chinook @15min
1oz. Chinook @5min

WLP568 Saison yeast blend
WLP380 Weizen IV yeast


Rack onto the saison cake on bottling day. Leave for roughly 1-2 weeks @75*. Basically, once the saison gets slow (but doesn't stop) rack it to the weizen cake.

Boil up candy sugar (and DME). Bottle weizen and rack red ale onto the weizen cake. Add extra sugar to help the weizen yeast. Ferment at ~68* for 4-5weeks.



I know the controversy about mixing yeast strains. I figure I care more about the flavors of the Saison blend than the weizen. Hopefully the weizen will finish it off and not be overpowered by the Saison yeast. But if the Saison yeast just takes over... no harm.

I like the concept. I think the malt bill looks solid, but I would switch away from the Chinooks. You already have so much going on, I’d go with a more subtle/spicy hop like Hallertau or Saaz (or one of their domestic equivalents). I’d also go with table sugar instead of clear candi sugar (which is nearly identical and a fraction of the cost.) Otherwise looks good, let us know how it turns out.

Oldsock said:

I like the concept. I think the malt bill looks solid, but I would switch away from the Chinooks. You already have so much going on, I’d go with a more subtle/spicy hop like Hallertau or Saaz (or one of their domestic equivalents). I’d also go with table sugar instead of clear candi sugar (which is nearly identical and a fraction of the cost.) Otherwise looks good, let us know how it turns out.

Click to expand...

My understanding is that the Chinook will provide good spicy flavors. Yeah, it's high AA, but I need a lot of bittering to balance how malty the beer will be. Plus, they're getting thrown in near the end of the boil. So... similar to your idea, I'm going with Tett for the bittering, figuring that's pretty equivalent to Hallertau, but a bit spicier.