One of my favorite commercial beers here in New Zealand is Macs Sassy Red so I decided to have a go at making something similar. I found a recipe for an approximation called Slutty Red and I converted it for extract brewing and made a few mods based on ingredients available and getting some good advice on the home brewing forums.
The main hops flavour in Sassy Red comes from Motueka hops. These used to be known as B Saaz hops (as they were bred by crossing Saaz with New Zealand breeding selection), and hence the name Sassy Red for a Saazy beer.
One new experimental thing I did in this batch was using a pre-hopped kit as part of the fermentables. Why? Cost the unhopped malt extract in either dry or liquid format costs significantly more than a corresponding amount of pre-hopped kit. I reckon its a supply and demand thing more people are buying the kits than malt extract. So I used a can of Coopers Lager as it is one of the lighter ones available. Since it is already hopped I factored this into my bitterness calculations using the handy Kit & Extract Beer Designer. With most of the bittering coming from the Coopers can, I went with a 30 min boil instead of the usual 60 min as I was primarily just doing flavour & aroma hop additions after steeping the specialty grains.
So heres the recipe and beer profile:
Grains:
CaraAroma 0.15 kg
Caramel Wheat Malt 0.15 kg
Dark Crystal 270 0.05 kg
Chocolate Malt 600 0.05 kg
Other Fermentables:
Light dry malt extract 1.5 kg
Coopers Lager kit 1.7 kg
Hops:
Pacific Jade 10g @ 30 Mins
Motueka 5g @ 30 Mins
Motueka 15g @ 20 Mins
Motueka 20g @ 10 Mins
Motueka 40g @ 0 Mins
Motueka 20g DRY HOPPED
Expected Profile
OG 1.046
IBU 45.2
FG 1.012
EBC 23.7
%alc 4.8
Full writeup at: http://beerandgarden.com/batch-no-6-aidans-slutty-red
The main hops flavour in Sassy Red comes from Motueka hops. These used to be known as B Saaz hops (as they were bred by crossing Saaz with New Zealand breeding selection), and hence the name Sassy Red for a Saazy beer.
One new experimental thing I did in this batch was using a pre-hopped kit as part of the fermentables. Why? Cost the unhopped malt extract in either dry or liquid format costs significantly more than a corresponding amount of pre-hopped kit. I reckon its a supply and demand thing more people are buying the kits than malt extract. So I used a can of Coopers Lager as it is one of the lighter ones available. Since it is already hopped I factored this into my bitterness calculations using the handy Kit & Extract Beer Designer. With most of the bittering coming from the Coopers can, I went with a 30 min boil instead of the usual 60 min as I was primarily just doing flavour & aroma hop additions after steeping the specialty grains.
So heres the recipe and beer profile:
Grains:
CaraAroma 0.15 kg
Caramel Wheat Malt 0.15 kg
Dark Crystal 270 0.05 kg
Chocolate Malt 600 0.05 kg
Other Fermentables:
Light dry malt extract 1.5 kg
Coopers Lager kit 1.7 kg
Hops:
Pacific Jade 10g @ 30 Mins
Motueka 5g @ 30 Mins
Motueka 15g @ 20 Mins
Motueka 20g @ 10 Mins
Motueka 40g @ 0 Mins
Motueka 20g DRY HOPPED
Expected Profile
OG 1.046
IBU 45.2
FG 1.012
EBC 23.7
%alc 4.8
Full writeup at: http://beerandgarden.com/batch-no-6-aidans-slutty-red
