Lil Red Irish Ale v4

[CrealCritter]

If your looking for authentic premium Irish Red Ale. Then this is the recipe for you. The recipe contains the best of the best locally sourced to the United Kingdom ingredients. It's also a well crafted brew. It's taken me 4 tweaks to zero in on this repeatable recipe. That's why I'm calling it version 4. This is what I would expect to drink if I bellied up the the bar in a Dublin Brew Pub. Drinking a pint of V4 makes me want to get a bagpipe and kilt and a pair of those funky looking socks. BTW... what kind of underwear does a guy wear with a kilt? None? Woohoo!

Yeast is 1 pack.of Danstar Nottingham. Primary 1 week @ 65F, rack and Secondary 2 weeks @ 65F. Bottle with 6 ounces of white table sugar and condition for two weeks @ 65F, chill and serve. Or keg @ 35F to 2.3 volumes CO2.

My other Irish Red Ale recipe, I have posted ---> here <--- makes a fine inexpensive (budget) Irish Red Ale. With grist grown in Wisconsin (Briess), hops grown in the UK and UK yeast. But it's not the same as using quality authentic heirloom grist though.

 

[CrealCritter]

Look closely, what do you see? The 10lbs of Maris Otter says Milled. But it's the worst milling job I ever seen. There is no way I could brew with this, it's a horrible crush if it's even milled at all. I might be able to pull 40% efficiency when I mash it. My efficiency has been running in the lower 80's, so it's not even worth mashing as is.

This is my first time ordering anything from MoreBeer.com and the only reason I did is because they were the only ones that had Crisp No. 19 in stock. I placed my order April 14 and it shows up today via FedEx (2 weeks later).

I left a 1 star rating for this malt on their website. But I'm not expecting any replies. I could have ordered from Ritebrew.com and most likey would have had Crisp No. 19 a week later properly milled, even though they were out of stock the 14th.

Lesson learned - be careful who you order from! Now I got to get out my Corona mill and crank untill my arm falls off. Maybe I might could use a drill instead of the hand crank. But still it's ridiculous to pay for milling and receive something like this...

 

[CrealCritter]

I gave that malts a proper milling with my hand crank Corona mill. It's so touchy to get the grind just right without creating flour. But I think I got a good grind with all the proper measurements. To fine of grind and you risk a stuck sparge, too course and efficiency suffers, creating a week beer.

 

[CrealCritter]

After putting a proper crush on the grains from morebeer, with my Corona mill, I felt much better and proceeded to brew.

I thought I had another ounce of KEG hops. But then I remembered I gave my son in law a ounce. So last minute hop adjustment to 16g FWH and 14g with 15 minutes left to flame out.

I over shot my sparge by a good quart. Instead of extending the boil, i just rolled with it... however adjusted for temperature ~80 degrees wort came in right around 1.044. So I managed to squeeze out around 87% efficiency. I would say that's a darn good crush for a Corona mill, new efficiency record for me

Wort is a beautiful deep ruby red and came out of the boil good and clear.

My chickens love me long time, lay me many eggs

 

[CrealCritter]

This Lil Red Irish Ale has finished up primarily fermention at around 1.011. I racked into my clean and sterile 6 1/2 gallon glass carboy for 13 or 14 days of secondary fermention. it's amazingly smooth and ballanced tasting for a beer that's only 8 days old. Premium grain bill = Premium Beer. I can already taste the difference in using heirloom Crisp no.19 Marris Otter base grains.

 

[CrealCritter]

Racked into keg @ 1.011 or around 4.3% ABV.