Does This Recipe Look Ok?

[DustyRusty]

Hi Guys,

Been brewing for a year or so. Still doing extract (live in a tiny place). A while ago I tried a Macs Sassy Red Ale; Absolutely loved it. Trying to come up with an extract recipe that uses similar ideas. So it was basically a Red Ale with a whole lot of Saaz hops. So it had the sweet ale taste but heaps of Saaz flavour and aroma. In general I love really hoppy beers, but not quite as bitter as a sandy IPA, and I like the alcohol volume to generally be over 5.5%. I'm thinking about doing the following tomorrow:

26 Litre Batch:

1.5kg LME Light
3.0kg DME Light
400g Choc
300g Crystal
200 Cara Dark
10g Pacific Gem (A16%) 60mins
10g Pacific Gem 25mins
20g Saaz (A4%) 20mins
30g Saaz 10 mins
30g Saaz 5 mins
20g Saaz (infusion)
20g Saaz (Dry hop)
Safale US-05

BrewMate gives me a ABV of 6.68%, IBU 33.3, Balance 1.07.

What do you reckon? Any changes i could make, any stupid mistakes here?

DustyRusty

 

[Lecterfan]

Wow - sounds like an interesting blend, a red ale with saaz. Personally I would be careful using 400gms of choc on top of 300 gms of crystal and 200 caradark. My minimal experience of choc malt leads me to be very cautious when using it; for my taste it can easily be too strong or overpower the nuance of the other malts.

Just my opinion.

Good luck. :icon_cheers:

 

[beerdrinkingbob]

Wow - sounds like an interesting blend, a red ale with saaz. Personally I would be careful using 400gms of choc on top of 300 gms of crystal and 200 caradark. My minimal experience of choc malt leads me to be very cautious when using it; for my taste it can easily be too strong or overpower the nuance of the other malts.

Just my opinion.

Good luck. :icon_cheers:

I agree, my experience with chocolate is it can be overpowering, I used 260 grams in a stout and it came out very chocolaty. I haven't used caradark before so can't comment on that.

I recently did an Irish red (that wasn't that red) and used light crystal , dark crystal and roasted barley @10,5 and 1.5%, it is sweet but balances well with 57 IBU's but i haven't tried the beer you tasted so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm sure other will give you some good ideas.

Good Luck

 

[DustyRusty]

Thanks guys,

This is exactly the sort of info i need. I'll reduce the choc at least by half. I tend to drink stouts so don't mind a bit of roasty/chocolate flavour, but it seems like 400g was a bit of overkill. Thanks again.

DR

 

[manticle]

Definitely too high on the choc (and would probably come out black rather than red).

Have you dry hopped with saaz before? I find it way too grassy. Obviously personal taste differs - you may love it.

I'd probably up the bittering a little to be in keeping with the higher alc and sweetness of DME and crystal but personal preference again. Check the BU:GU ratio if such things interest you

http://beercolor.netfirms.com/balance.html

I would also bitter all the way with saaz if it's a saaz hit you're wanting but I'm not sure if there's PG in the commercial beer that inspires you (or if you like PG - I've never used it).

I realise that would drive the cost up.

 

[Guysmiley54]

I love this beer too :icon_drool2:

There is a recipe on this site somewhere (no time to look it up for you right now sorry) But even the author claims it is close (and very nice in its own right) but not a real clone of this beer. Mac claim to use 5 different malts in this beer...

Please update us on your first go, if it's tasty I'll give it a go too :icon_cheers:

 

[DustyRusty]

thanks again fellas. manticle thanks for the thoughts. never dry hopped with saaz before. I do like the grassy hit though. but i'll be careful and may reduce it a bit so thanks for the tip. the BU:GU ratio is 0.49 (according to BrewMate) which looks pretty evenly balanced: that's about what i'm after. You're probably right about bittering with saaz too but i had some PG left over from the last brew that i need to use and do really like it as a bittering hop, so i might give the PG a shot and see if i need to replace it with saaz for next time.


guyssmiley, yes there's a recipe on here called 'slutty red' which is an AG version. Looks great and similar sort of hop bill to this one but very different grains: i've written mine according to what specialty grains my homebrew store has that may work. I'm not actually intending for a direct copy though (even that would be awesome) i really, as a minimum, just want to use the (strange) idea of having a red ale with a whole lot of Saaz hops. Although i think my brew will be more brown than red. Macs isn't the easiest to find but if this brew works well i'll track down a bottle and do a comparison and let you know.

thanks again fellas for all your help.

DR