A couple of weeks ago, I posted about starting over with my Irish red recipe, and using a lot of Bestmalz Red X this time around.
Well, the verdict is in. Today’s post covers the results, with a pretty picture of the beer - plus a bonus picture that apparently makes some people mad.
Now, if you don’t care to read the post, the tl;dr is this - the beer absolutely did come out red. It’s a fuzz darker/more brown than I would ideally like, but seeing as how the beer is tasty, I think that a couple of minor tweaks in version six may finally perfect this recipe and give me the look that I’ve been going for.
You sucked me in. I was expecting to see a Donny or Hilster pic and it took a moment to recognize the hydrometer pic was offensive. I just instituted a bunch of brewery process changes to reduce DO in my beers. I think they are worth it. Give it a thought. Your beers will stay fresher, longer.
So, have you made that recipe before with another base malt? I have to admit that I tend to use malts that are indigenous to the beer style. A German maltster wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I understand your interest due to the color rating. You mention Munich-like flavor, but a lack of caramel. That description has some similarity to Paul’s Mild Malt, which I love.
You noted in your previous post that the ph was more than two-tenths lower than expected. I’d blame the malt over the water. My Red-X has a distilled pH of 5.2 where is should be closer to 5.7. I’m brewing with it again this upcoming Monday.
Will you update with your pH results? My next beer will use Red X and I am trying to figure out what pH to shoot for in Bru’n Water. I want a mash ph of 5.4 so plan to develop a water profile higher than that based on others feedback.
Hehe. My last post showed me floating the hydrometer in my kettle, and I got a lot of crap about that from a couple of buddies. So I figured it would be a bit of a joke to mention this as an offensive pic.
I’m interested in minimizing oxygen, at least on the cold side (I’m not ready or even super interested in the LODO stuff yet). I do purge my kegs prior to siphoning, and purge three or four times after. I try to minimize splashing and such. If you have some suggestions as to things I can improve, I’m all ears!
As I alluded in my post, this was a complete “start over” for my Irish red. I’ve done four other versions with varying levels of success on appearance and flavor targets. I also try to use indigenous ingredients - next weekend, I’m brewing a British brown for NHC, and will be using exclusively Crisp and Simpsons malts, UK hops, and WLP002.
For the red, I was really trying to think outside the box a bit, as I just hadn’t been happy with any of my previous versions. This is what led me to Red X.
Paul’s Mild? That’s a new one on me, I’ll have to check it out.
That’s not a bad thought, but even if it was a contributing factor, I’m pretty sure that my water is at fault. Our community facebook page has several complaints about the water, we had a friend be forced to delay buying some tropical fish as she just couldn’t get the pH high enough in her tank for them. My last brewday was also rather low on pH, and I brewed a tried a true recipe with the same ingredients I’ve used in the past.
I need to reach out to my water company and see if I can get an updated report, or talk to one of the engineers. Those guys love to talk water, it seems.
For the Irish Red, I see that the color that you have for red x is around 15L which I have seen around before.
Best Malz says it is 11-13L. With my 100% red x beer, I used 12L and the beer color was estimated at 13 SRM and blood red. My next beer will be 50% red x so I am targeting that SRM figure again realizing it will look different.
I too am trying to make a red beer without using red X at 100% so have been nit picking over color ratings and such…
Basically what figure should I be using to help estimate color? 12L or 15L?
I actually used 12L on Beersmith. The BU ingredient in the recipe ingredient database is set to show 15L due to older data - I need to update that.
As far as that goes, my roasted barley was also 500L (from Crisp), not 300L (typical of US maltsters). There is UK roasted barley in the database, I think - I need to update the recipe to accurately reflect what I used.
Brewing this up Monday, found the Red X at Rebel Brewer. Thanks again for the help finding this malt online. I was going to go ahead and get the wlp028 yeast, but I already had 3 packs of US05 I got on the cheap, so I decided to use it instead. Should make good beer, but just not all the flavors that’s true to this style.
