I’m wanting to a red rye ale with falconers flight and the Best Red X seems interesting. I’m reading descriptions of it being munich-like. Do you think using this as a 80-85% base malt will muddy 15-20% rye or the combination is too heavy in the bready department?
I might use a little bit of other malts - thinking perhaps 5% C15 or C40 or even 2-3% smoked malt (just enough to question if it’s there)?
Would you scrap this idea?
Keep it simple and use 2 ingredients?
Would you go with cara?
Would you go with smoke?
red x not at 100% and outside 1.055 doesn’t seem to make the best red beer if that’s where you are headed. in this case, I’d use carared instead. its a real nice malt contribution and gives a nice amber red color to your beer, without bombing it with crystal notes. i d go about 90-92% rye base + rye and 8-10% carared.
I think it sounds good. If it were me, I would keep it simple and stick with the 2 malts or possibly throw in a small amount of carared or something. The couple of times that I have used Red X, I thought it was similar to munich in the malty category.
You sure he should use that much Rye? I’m thinking he’ll need a metric truckload of rice hulls to lauter and the finished beer will have the consistency of carbonated loogies.
Even at 73% 2row, 18% rye, and 9% carared I think I’m looking at a color of 9. That’s not red. If I max the carared to 25% it looks like about 15.5, which is getting there.
Red X is not in the calculator I use but I adjusted dark munich to where Red X is supposed to be. Coupled with 18% rye, I think I can get 20.8srm and OG 1.059. I’m not the best with color, but that seems pretty red to me (maybe even brown).
Adding what goschman said - about 9% carared - to that would be 22.5srm. That’s too brown I think?
dont get too locked in on xx srm = red. its not the case. ive had many brews under 10srm with different combinations of vienna, melanoidin and carared that are really nice amber red.
the malster even qualifies that with red x, 100% and at about 1.055 OG provides the best results in terms of red color…just wanted you to be aware.
Per Best Malz, a 100% Red X grain bill at at gravity of 1.050 will produce the optimum red color. Lower or higher amounts of Red X may need additional adjustments. Shade isn’t specifically part of the SRM spectrum, so I would take SRM with a grain of salt. The same SRM could potentially range from orange to amber to brown in color tone. I’d use Best’s recommendation as a starting point and adjust from there with CaraRed, Carafa, etc.
FWIW, I brewed a beer that was 50% red x (along with a variety of other malts) and it turned out very dark although the calculated SRM was 16. From my estimations it was probably about 20 SRM. For the next batch, I swapped out the red x for munich 10L and my beer was much lighter and actually red; probably much closer to the 16 SRM I was originally shooting for. I think Best has it rated for 12L but I found it to be closer to 15L which I saw somewhere else as well…
I realize this doesn’t apply to the 100% red X shooting for 1.050 scenario but I found the color comparison with Munich 10L interesting. I would like to try to brew a 100% Red X beer at some point now knowing its recommended usage.
Ken, how did you enter this into Bru’n Water? I remember something about it being funky to where you had to change the color rating or add it as crystal malt to get your pH right.
i didnt adjust in brunwater because i didnt know t was going to happen. i just made baking soda additions after 10 minutes to bring PH up from 5.18 to 5.4
Here’s the red x 91%and pale ale malt 9% (I needed 11lb grain and only had 10# red x…,wished I had used the carared vs pale ale to see how the red contribution came out)
i think it depends on your salt additions and water source, but perhaps plan for a .1-.15 lower than projected to start, then just be ready to to add little baking soda to desired PH. my RO water is almost like distilled and is impacted easily.
