I had some great successes with Kilkenny style Irish Red when I was brewing kit + partial mash while teaching myself the techniques for all-grain. Any of the pale Coopers kits (Lager, Canadian Blonde, etc.) will do as the base, I think the best one I made used the Canadian.
IMHO there are a few key characteristics to the style, which are easy to achieve with the right ingredient choices and make it quite easy to knock off a clone.
1. Red colour - about 50-60g of either black malt or roast barley in a normal 20-23 litre batch gets this right. 12 SRM is the desired colour level.
2. Toffee/caramel flavour - Medium (55L) crystal malt at about 150-200g.
3. Creamy texture. Flaked barley in the mash/partial mash.
4. A hint of diacetyl in the flavour. Irish type yeasts (1084, WLP004) or English yeasts which leave diacetyl (eg. Safale S-04, Wyeast 1968) achieve this character. Nottingham ale yeast works as well if you ferment it nice & cool (14-16C) so it leaves some diacetyl behind.
5. Keep the alcohol in the low-mid 4% range and gravity around 1.040-1.045 for high sessionability.
6. Bitterness - no more than 25 IBUs.
7. Discernable hops flavour, ideally from Northdown at about 20 minutes. EKG works well here too, but shifts the flavour toward an English beer.
8. Hops aroma from East Kent Goldings works well with the style, or just go with the 20 minute Northdown addition.
9. Keep carbonation on the low side, and serve at 10-12C.
My best partial mash Irish Red was as follows:
- Coopers Canadian Blonde kit
- 250g dextrose or cane sugar
Partial mash - 60 minutes at 66 degrees C:
- 1.5kg english pale malt
- 60g black malt
- 140g english crystal malt
- 100g flaked barley
- 1 flat teaspoon gypsum (optional depending on water supply)
60 minute condensed boil (10 litres) starting from wort sparged from partial mash:
- 20g Northdown or East Kent Goldings @ 20 minutes before end
- add can kit and sugar @ 10 minutes before end
- add irish moss @ 5 minutes before end
- (optional if more aroma is desired): 10g East Kent Goldings at end.
Chill and top up to about 20 litres in fermenter.
OG should be about 1.044, bitterness around 25 IBUs and a colour of around 12 SRM.
My batches generally fermented down to 1.011 for about 4.4% ABV (Kilkenny is 4.3%)
When made with Wyeast 1084 this beer was very close to Kilkenny, if served on nitro it probably would have been a dead ringer.
cheers,
Colin