I know the first answer I’m gonna get to this is to add black but I wanted to make a winter ale, sort of similar in colour to New Belgium Winter Ale (which I’ve never had, only seen ads) and I wanted to ask how you get that beautiful deep mahogany red hue to the beer? I’ve added black patent in small quantities at sparge and also in the mash in other mashes and although I get some reddish tint, I find I get more of an amber than mahogany red.
One of my favourite beers used to be Upper Canada Winter Ale but that’s long gone so I thought I’d take a shot at a 7% winter warmer to get through the February and March up here in the Great White North.
I’ve used up to 120 and I like the colour but it also gave me a real raisiny/pruny/burnt sugar taste that I didn’t really care for. Higher than 120? And how much, in 5 gals and what flavours will I get from it?
I think crystal is going to give you different shades of amber. I use C-60 all the time and that’s what I get. Maybe some combination of that and some cara-red.
if you’re afraid of the flavor contributions, why not just top mash a very little Carafa III, 2 oz goes a long way. I used maybe 2 oz, ran through a coffee grinder to make powder then sprinkled it on top of my mash for a brownish Saison.
I asked about this in a post a while back. I tried cara red with a fair amount of carafa II huskless at the beginning of the sparge. I ended up making the final beer using Cara Amber which was a bit darker than the cara red and carafa special II huskless. I got a wonderfully dark red color. I’ll try and get a sample soon and post a picture.
+1
I make an Irish Red that has (12 gals) 1 lb Crystal 120, 12 oz CaraRed and 5 oz Carafa Special II in the whole mash. Comes out about 15L and is that deep red color. In my experience British malts will give you brown/amber German/European malts give red/amber. My next batch I am going to try 4 oz of Castle debittered black.
I use Carared in varying proportions with very small additions of pale chocolate (start with approx .06oz ), but I add the pale chocolate during the sparge. Increase the chocolate as necessary to achieve the desired color. I can get anything between an amber to a mahogany depending on the level of pale chocolate added to the sparge.
i remember the major questioning about cara red not long ago as well. i was going to revisit this topic. my wife recently had a blue moon from their christmas sampler ( it was actually good and i don’t like their regular stuff) but it also is red, could put it against red velvet cake and not notice difference. i will try some various crystal malts soon then.
