Red Ale Help

[JohnnyVee]

Here's my first attempt at creating my own Red Ale recipe and I need some help tweaking it. Here is what I did:

10 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb Crystal 40
8 oz Roasted Barley
1 oz Willamette @60 min
.5 oz East Kent Goldings @15 min
.5 oz East Kent Goldings @5
Yeast US-05

After a quick taste I now realize I used too much roasted barley because all I taste is chocolate/coffee. I was thinking for the next batch I'll drop that down to .25 oz and hopefully get more of a Redish color (rather than dark brown) and less coffee flavor. It may be from the over powering roasted barley but it also wasn't as sweet as I'd hoped. Any suggestions on ways to improve the grain bill? Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[DarkBrood]

Yeah, half a pound of Roasted Barley is rather a bit much for a red ale. I wouldn't go over 1/4#....probably down to 1/8#, since the other tweaks I'd make would darken it a bit too.
A bready-biscuity flavor is somewhat signature to Irish Red Ales (the "liquid bread" of the Isles), so I'd strongly suggest adding some Biscuit or Victory malt to the bill. If you're looking for a little extra personality, you can home-toast (plenty of threads here on that topic) 1-3# of your base malt. I prefer to use an Irish Ale yeast, or at least a British Ale of some kind to help fill out the character - the US-05 will ferment extremely clean (like it always does) and you may need to make an additional character adjunct addition to help fill in some of what the Irish/British yeasts provide.

Here's my suggestion:
7# Maris Otter 2.5*L
2# Maris Otter (home-toasted 20 minutes) 15*L
1# Biscuit Malt 19*L
1# Crystal/Caramel 60*L
.125# Roasted Barley 500*L
.75# CaraPils

Your hop bill looks fine. Stick with English hop varietals and their relatives, you're all set for anything Irish.

If you want to stick with the US-05, consider adding one or more of these (the US-05 will let some of these lighter flavors show through in ways an Irish yeast couldn't):

1# Oak-Smoked Wheat Malt (hints of warm smoke, increases head formation/retention)
.75# Rauchmalt (Beechwood-Smoked Malt) (hints of light smoke)
1-3# honey (subtle honeylike flavor with ABV increase)
1# Honey or Abbey Malt + 1# honey (honeylike sweetness flavor, plus ABV boost)
2 Tbsp dried elderberries in secondary ferment (aged, smoky, stonefruitiness)
1# Rye Malt (adds spiciness and a hint of whiskey to the nose)
fennel seeds (licorice-like sharp hot spiciness)
caraway seeds (rich warm soft spiciness)
2-6oz flavorful whiskey (add to secondary or at bottling - not too much, don't kill yeast!)