Imperial American Honey Red Ale help wanted

I am attempting to create an Imperial American style Honey Red Ale and i would like to ask those who feel like critiquing my recipe for some help. i am a new AG brewer, but not new to brewing. This will be the first recipe that i have crafted on my own (no attempt to clone or copy any recipe). After researching several recipes and reading about the style, this is what i have come up with...

Grain Bill
12 lbs American 2 row malt
.5 Crystal 40
.5 Crystal 60
.5 Crystal 80
1.5 Honey malt
2 oz Chocolate malt or roasted barley

Hop Bill
1 oz Warrior (bittering)
2 oz Citra (bittering & aroma)
1 oz Mt. Hood (aroma)
maybe dry hopping with 1 oz Cascade.

Some questions... 1) How would it make a difference if i changed the American 2 row malt to Maris Otter? Would it still be considered American?
2) I want to balance the higher alcohol flavor with more hops, do i have enough? I don't want it to be an IPA though... Do these hops "play well" with one another? 3) Is chocolate malt or roasted barley the better choice to help with color? I am trying for a gorgeous red color on the beer.

I look forward to hearing from you knowledgeable people on the subject. I am excited to see if i can craft a decent brew from what i have learned here.

 

So, I'm gathering you want kind of a red-IPA with some reddish color and added sweetness? Maybe add a little more information, like target OG, target bitterness, when you are adding the hops you mention

Assuming my interpretation of what you're after is correct, I'll offer a few suggestions. I would certainly up the hopping rate. Maybe not dramatically so, but it just depends how hoppy you want it. I have very limited experience with honey malt, but from what I understand, 1.5 is a lot and will give you a ton of that flavor. I don't really like honey malt all that much (which is irrelevant), but if you've never used it before, I might back that off a bit, or back off the caramel malt.

Getting a "red" color isn't all that straightforward. Yours will probably be in the amber range. Roasted barley is pretty traditional in Irish Reds, but you won't get much in the way of flavor either way. If you can get your hands on some CaraRed, thats "supposed" to help guide in the right direction. As for maris otter, a lot of people use it for full flavor in pale ales. You probably don't need it, but if you do, you can still call it whatever you want.

Cheers!

 

Do you have brewing software? When I'm working on a recipe I really find brewing software to be indispensable. Plugging your weights in for a 5 gallon batch with 70% efficiency (what I usually get, ymmv) I get the following:

OG = 1.069
IBU = 86 (I did the Warrior at 60 min, Citra at 30 and 20 minutes, and Mt Hood at 5 min)

Which puts your IBU/GU ratio at 1.26 which is pretty hoppy.

I like Maris Otter a lot, especially when you need something to stand up to hops. Should you sub it for the 2 Row? I don't know. If it were me I'd probably go back and forth and just flip a coin in the end. Not sure that helps you much, but there you go...

 

ok, thanks. to clarify a bit, i want more than "some reddish color". i want a deep rich burgundy color for this brew. i envision my OG to be in the range of 1.080 - 1.090 with FG being near 1.015. Bitterness I think should be around 45 - 50 to balance out the higher alcohol. I do NOT want the hops to take over! i want a balance of flavor between the malt and hops, even erring towards sweeter if anything. thanks for your comments.

 

i tweaked the recipe a bit...
14 lbs. 2 row American malt
1 lb honey malt
1.5 crystal 20 malt
.5 lbs carared malt
.15 lbs roasted barley
1 oz. Warrior hops
2 oz. Citra hops
1 oz. Mount Hood hops
1 oz. Cascade (dry hop)

i may adjust the hops schedule to balance the bitterness. i am aiming for a balanced beer, not an IPA. high alcohol volume to get more bang for my buck. brewing this coming weekend. stay tuned.

 

This is the final tweak on my recipe. I was going with the last grain bill i posted above, but a mistake in listening skills (my brother!) turned 1.5 lbs. of crystal 20 into 1.5 lbs. of crystal 120! didn't realize the mistake until the grains were mixed... so i dropped the .15 of roasted barley and the .5 of carared. Luckily the color actually came out closer to what i wanted! the other was too dark for my liking, but this is spot on. You CAN learn from your screwups!!!
Here is the final recipe ('cause i already bought everything...)
https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/ass-kickin-american-imperial-red-honey

 

well, brew day has come and gone. a few thoughts... i missed my OG by a LOT! wanted 1.082 and got 1.070. i mashed at 148 for 60 minutes... don't know what the problem was, but i am not sure this beer will be "imperial" by the recognized standards. On the positive side, the color was excellent! a deep red and it was clear as a bell. flavor was sweet with a very balanced hop profile. so i think it will be a good, solid effort, but i am not sure it will be the BIG beer i was going for. time will tell ulitimately. cheers.

 

I am by no means an expert, but I would suggest based on my own recipe creation difficulty to be careful when you add many types of malt. I made an irish red recipe with gravity a little lower than yours, but when it finished I found it was hard to isolate the different flavors of the various malts. As a result I wasn't sure which to increase or decrease to get the flavor I wanted, so I ended up simplifying it so I could isolate flavors. Unless you hit it on the head the first time or have a lot of experience with which specific malts give what (lots of malts give body, but which one do I want to change?) You might want to go a little more simple and add complexity from there.

Still, I hope it turns out well for you!

 

stressedpenguin, i think you are correct. but i only used three malts in this beer. 2-row, crystal 120, and honey malt. i believe that i got a good flavor on the brew, just not the OG i was shooting for. i wanted a beer over 8% alcohol... i NEED one over 7.5% to call it an Imperial. keeping my fingers crossed.

 

I can't wait to see how this turns out... The recipe is really interesting. A fellow brewer and myself are putting together a couple of recipes for an event in June. We are looking for a beer that would be a bit unusual. Let me know how this turns out!

 

i just dry hopped with 1 ounce of cascade yesterday. i had some issues with the yeast, or thought i did. after 72 hours they hadn't been any activity in the airlock, so i created a starter with a different yeast (BRY-97 American West Coast from Danstar) and as i was preparing to pitch that, i noticed bubbles in my airlock! so i had to save the BRY-97 starter for another batch. i am excited to see how this turns out also. i will keep everyone up to date on my progress...