Monday 18 February 2008

Brewday : Red Sky Ale


With my heart set on producing a beer with good malt characteristics with a deep red colour I brewed 25L of Red Sky Ale. The hope was that by adding to a base of Marris Otter pale malt a reasonable amount of Crystal Malt (7%) and small amounts of Chocolate Malt and Roasted Barley (both 1.5%) I'd get what I'm after. As you can see from the trial jar at the end of the brew colour wise it turned out a bit darker than I thought although it is definitely red! I’ll see how it turns out but I might ease off or drop the Roasted Barley next time.

I overshot my target OG of 1.046 and ended up with 25L at 1.050, I've tried to bitter this one to around 36IBU using 55g of 6.8aa Challenger (a great hop) and following the pleasing results with "Big Kenny" of using a citrus aroma hop in a complex malt beer I've gone with 20g each of Styrians and Amarillo. St Peters do a beer called Ruby Red Ale, which use Styrians as the aroma hop, I’ll be pleased if it's anything at all like that.

It's fermenting away as it should be after pitching 11g safale s04.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks red from where I'm sat Wez. Did you get to try Calums "Old Grumpy" at all? That had a cracking malt character, I'm fancying brewing something similar in the near future.

Anonymous said...

Nice looking wort - it appears red on my screen too.

Some tricks for more malt flavor (that you may already know).

Reduce the hops to say 30 IBUs, also consider reducing your late hope additions as I find a lot of late hop additions and I lose the malt flavors I am looking for amongst the hop aromoa and taste.

Consider mashing warmer than "normal" say 67 maybe even 68.

Some calcium chloride for flavoring. Shot for a ratio of 2:1chlorides to sulphates.

As to color your beer may lighten slightly as a result of fermenation, yeast dropping out and your cold conditioning. The change won't be dramatic but it will be evident.

Look foward to hearing how this one turns out.

Anonymous said...

Another thought look at getting some aromatic malt or melanoidin malt.

Melanoidin will give you red color as well. Carared is another option for red color.

Wez said...

Hi Matt

Thanks for the suggestions, as it's fermented out it has lightened up a bit, it's funny you mention Melanoidin, i'd been discussing it with another brewer recently and would like to give it a try.

I'll post a picture when it's ready to drink.