Imperial Irish Red Ale

[JMK1992]

Was thinking of brewing an Imperial Irish Red Ale (8-9%) and ageing on some Irish whiskey soaked french oak chips. Has anyone any experience of brewing a stronger red ale?

 

[thehaze]

You could scale up your favourite Irish Red Ale recipe to match the desired ABV. But a quick recipe would be base malt + 2 different Crystal malts to get some complexity ( a Dark one works well ) and some Roasted Barley/or anything you like to up the colour add a bit of dryness.

 

[JMK1992]

Yea I was thinking of adding maybe like 0.5-1% of UK pale chocolate. Tried one recently that had a slight chocolate bite on the backend and really liked it.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Was thinking of brewing an Imperial Irish Red Ale (8-9%) and ageing on some Irish whiskey soaked french oak chips. Has anyone any experience of brewing a stronger red ale?

I don't but this idea sounds really good!

I have been playing on paper with scaling up and Oatmeal Stout from the 6.5% percent range to 9% range. My thinking is that if you scale up the base malt by 50%, you probably want to scale up the specialty grains by more like 25%. I am not positive about how to scale up the hops.

 

[thehaze]

At 8-9%, you want a bit of oomph from the malts, so a combination of flavourful Crystal malts with some Roasted something ( I like Roasted Wheat and Rye especially ), could do the trick. I would still mash low ot ensure proper extraction and attenuation, along with an yeast that can attenuate at least up to 75-80%. Nottingham dry yeast is a good choice, otherwise US-05, Irish Ale yeast can work, as well as any Whitbread strains and most likely Fuller's, if you want it a bit more exter forward.

Something like 13 lbs 2-row + 4 lb Munich Light ( 6L - Weyermann ) + 0.5 lb Crystal 40L + 0.5 lb Crystal 120L + 0.25 Roasted Rye should get you there. Keep specialty malt under 10-15%, aim for a SRM of 13-16, mash low.

 

[JMK1992]

Thinking of using a combination of the following:
Base Malts (75-80%)
Maris Otter Pale
Weyermann Munich Base Malt Type 1

Flaked Torrified Barley (8-9%)
Crystal 90L
Crystal 50L
Crisp Amber Malt
Weyermann CaraAmber Malt
Crisp Low Colour Chocolate Malt (1.5%)
Roasted Barley (1%)


Really want a strong bready biscuity caramel flavour with this one and a slight chocolate bite on the backend.

It was suggested to me to let the oak chips soak in honey for a week and then add whiskey and soak for a further 2-4 weeks before adding this to the secondary and aging for up to a month.

Still very much in the early stages on planning this one so the recipe will 100% change I am sure. Just trying to work on a few ideas.

 

[JMK1992]

I don't but this idea sounds really good!

I have been playing on paper with scaling up and Oatmeal Stout from the 6.5% percent range to 9% range. My thinking is that if you scale up the base malt by 50%, you probably want to scale up the specialty grains by more like 25%. I am not positive about how to scale up the hops.

Sounds good. White Hag make a great Imperial oatmeal stout and from tasting it they seem to have quite strong chocolate flavours. I made a 8% stout were I scaled the roasted barley a bit to much and it gave quite strong coffee ashy flavours which I didn't want as much. I personally rather more chocolate flavours. I quite like adding cacao nibs soaked in whiskey for 7 days to my stronger stouts.