Irish Red Ale - Is There Really Such A Thing?

[user 384]

I still stand by my original assertion that there is nothing intrinsically Irish about this beer, except maybe that the Irish, in particular Guiness were the first to experiment with mixed gas pouring. To me Irish Red Ale is better described under other existing categories like Bitter (although it hardly has enough hops) or even better Brown Ale.

However this is just a personal rant and I have the same problem with putting the word Imperial in front of everything just because it's higher in gravity than the normal version.

Maybe if Scottish and Newcastle wanted to introduce a "new" beer, they could serve a cream flow version of Newcastle Brown Ale and called Spud Murphy's Rowdy Red Ale!

Cheers
MAH

 

[user 384]

What am I talking about, Scottish and Newcastle already make an Irish Red. I just looked up some of their breweries and found this:

Beamish & Crawford, Cork, Eire

Capacity 574,000 hectolitres per annum with 1 keg line and 1 bottling line.
Main brands: Beamish genuine Irish Stout, Beamish Black, Beamish Red Irish Ale, Miller Genuine Draft, Fosters and Carling Black Label Lager.

Just reading the list of beers produced by this alchohol factory should give an indication of the quality and authenticity of Irish Red Ales.

Cheers
MAH

 

[Darren]

MAH,
How about Irish ales can have diacetyl. English ales not! Certainly one clear difference between the two styles.
cheers
Darren

 

[user 384]

MAH,
How about Irish ales can have diacetyl. English ales not! Certainly one clear difference between the two styles.
cheers
Darren

[post="55463"][/post]​

In a brown ale diacetyl is acceptable at low levels. So maybe an Irish is just a nitro served version of a Brown Ale?

Cheers
MAH

 

[neonmeate]

MAH,
How about Irish ales can have diacetyl. English ales not! Certainly one clear difference between the two styles.
cheers
Darren

[post="55463"][/post]​

In a brown ale diacetyl is acceptable at low levels. So maybe an Irish is just a nitro served version of a Brown Ale?

Cheers
MAH

[post="55467"][/post]​

yeah but an irish red has a caramel flavour and none of the toastiness of a brown.

but i agree with you, the style was invented to provide a sugary alternative to people not tough enough to drink guinness and should be abolished along with "amber ale"!

 

[wee stu]

FWIW, Murphy's Irish Red was launched into the Irish market in 2005 - following success in markets such as the USA.
It is branded as Irish Red Beer, not surprisingly really, 'cos it is, apparently, a lager .

awrabest, stu

 

[Sean]

MAH,
How about Irish ales can have diacetyl. English ales not! Certainly one clear difference between the two styles.
cheers
Darren

[post="55463"][/post]​

?

There are heaps of English ales with significant diacetyl levels.

 

[jayse]

snipped>
I still stand by my original assertion

[post="55452"][/post]​

I still think we should plug the guitars in and play them! :blink:
I know exactly where your coming from MAH but still understand and recognise many people do feel irish red is a style even though we mostly feel its a novelty not a beer.
same goes for when people post IPA recipes full of cascade we all now its not right but on some level we all know what the beer they are talking about is.


Jayse

 

[Darren]

English bitter/ pale ale, is there any difference between them? Why are these beers given two different categories when they very clearly overlap?
At least irish ale has some distinguishing features.

Sean, If you enter an english ale with diacetyl in a HB competition you will be marked down for diacetyl. Not so if you enter as an Irish ale

 

[user 384]

English bitter/ pale ale, is there any difference between them? Why are these beers given two different categories when they very clearly overlap?

Darren

Yep let's do it, let's scrap the category Bitter, as you say they're all just Pale Ales, with varying degrees of starting gravity and corresponding bitterness.

Cheers
MAH

 

[The Scientist]

I love Irish Red Ales, Murphys, Caffrey's, Beamish, Guinness, Beer, Nitro, Potatoes, Brien O'Driscoll, Ireland and especially Killkenny. :beerbang:

Yes I believe Irish Reds should have their own category and I don't really care that a lot of styles are ultimately very similar. I love the variety in the brewing world, even if the variety is purely in a name or origin.

The English troops in India who enjoyed the original IPAs were known to be more English and Patriotic than people that lived in England. So the Irish pubs here in Aus being over the top Irish, is just one of the things that happen when you try and create a pub that is narrowly classified as 'Irish'.

Beer is only made up of a few key ingrediance, so to most people who don't share our passion of brewing 'Beer is Beer'. Most people don't even really know what makes a beer, a lot of people think that beer is made out of hops. :huh:

The water in certain parts of the world imparts a unique character to some beers e.g. Pilsen. The Water in Ireland, Scotland and England are different, so their beers are different, this to name only one feature. To truly recreate this style obviously you would need to take these factors into consideration, but to say these styles should be abandoned is sad. I love the challenge of trying to replicate my Fav commercial brew, even if others think it is tasteless. What one person likes is another persons poison, I know I love Hoegaarden but my wife thinks it tastes like cat's piss :lol: Maybe I just have a wider range in my palette.

I think some of the beers I've brewed should have their own category, cuz they sure don't fit into any current ones. I think they still taste good, but some of you are probably starting to think my view has no merit.

Don't make me pull the Beer racist card!!!

Cheers,

TS

 

[Brewtus]

I like the way irish tourists to australia put it..'your irish pubs are more irish than the ones in ireland'..which of course doesn't really make sense.
With this it looks like even though irish is in the name the irish red ale is not something that you'd get in ireland just like our so called irish pubs.

This may be because at the turn of the century (6 years ago) there was a big trade in Irish pub crap. Overseas buyers would pay thousands for genuine irish pub fittings and decor, old lamps, buckets, hurling sticks, what ever crap had been in a pub in Ireland. Old pubs would sell all the crap, redecorate and still have money left and the irish got new, clean and modern pubs.

The bemish brewery is like tooheys in Sydney or Carlton in Melboure in the sense it is the cities traditional brewery but now is probably owned buy multinationals and brews sad copies of the companies other beers under licence to keep the volumes economically viable.

 

[bconnery]

Personally I think Smithwicks is an excellent beer. In my time in Ireland I drank it a lot. I believe that stating that Irish Red isn't a valid style because of the likes of Beamish Red and Kilkenny is like stating that Lager isn't because of the likes of Budweiser, VB etc.

St Arnou here in Brisbane does an excellent Irish red as well. Think Kilkenny with malt flavour and without the nitro kegness...

Irish Red is kind of like the ******* cousin of bitter and amber ale.

I also think that Scottish beers still have a difference to British ones although like any style in the modern global world the lines can become blurred.

Of course I have been sampling all evening so it could be me that is

I was forced to submit my Irish Red into the dark ale class of my local homebrew comp.

I got a Bronze and was half a point of a place.

Does this prove or disprove my point? Not sure. But would I have done well with it in the bitter category? I'm not so sure...

 

[Weizguy]

When I get my act together, I will transcribe from the Irish red article in a 2003 (ish) article about the same, in BYO.

Unless anyone chooses to beat me to the draw...

Seth

Looks like it was a long draw on this one.

Here's what Horst D. Dornbusch had to say in BYO (Jan- Feb 2003, Vol 9. No 1)...

Red Ale - The other style from Ireland - by Horst D. Dornbusch (excerpted without permission from BYO magazine, in the interest of beer education/ familiarisation on AHB)

Considering the popularity of Irish stouts, especially Guinness, we sometimes forget that stout was not the first Irish beer style. Nor has it always been the best known one. In fact, the earliest references to stout date only to the the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Beer in Ireland is obviously much older than that, although nobody really knows how old. Irish missionaries went to Europe in the sixth century and started breweries on the continent, buut I do not know if they learned brewing there or brought the skill over from Ireland. In addition, the Vikings probably brewed in Irelandduring their occupation of the British Isles, from roughly the ninth to the twelfth century. Either way, history makes one fact fairly clear - the Celtic ales brewed in Ireland in the Middle Ages and earlier had a noticeable ruby-red tinge. Hence the name: Irish red ale.

Today, Irish red ale is an obscure style. Not a single example can claim unqualified authenticity for itself. Much like the Vienna lager of central Europe, the Irish red has almost disappeeared and there is some debate as to its true characteristics. As best we can tell, the empahasis of traditional Irish red ale brewers, not unlike that of Munich lager brewers, has been on strong, slightly nutty maltiness and certainly not on powerrful hoppiness.. The Celtic ales brewed in Ireland in the Middle Ages and before then were probably only lightly hopped, And, unlike the stout, they did not taste very roasted at all - even though they likely contained plenty of darkish (but not necessarily black) malts. The brew's maltiness and colour come mostly from traditional brown malts, roasted barley and sugar syrups. These ingredients are what give the beer its familiar reddish tinge. To use a forced comparison, the Irish red is probably more like a marriage between a British brown or dark ale and a German Altbier than it is a precursor to the stout.

The article goes on to describe relavant ingredients and techniques to brew this ale.

And, typical of me to present the opposite point of view, paraphrasing my lhbs owner (proably inaccurately, but U get that...): "Kilkenny red - a traditional Irish ale, since the late 80's".

BTW, Kilkenny is Smithwicks. The K name is used in overseas marketing, prob coz it sounds more Irish.
I just can't help thinking of South Park. OMG, someone killed Kenny. You b@stard!

Seth out