When my wife and I first started brewing back 2002, we made Red Ale a few time via True Brew extract kits. The beer was good enough at the time, but as we moved past working with kits and into all-grain we just did not get back to brewing another red ale.
I have looked at plenty of recipes online and created a few myself in the BeerSmith2 software, but we never seem to get down to making the beer. (I only brewed one batch of beer last year, which is just sad.) Along the way, I put together this red ale recipe that I called Irish Plover, but until now I never actually made the beer.
I brewed this Irish Plover in the beginning of March 2015. This is an all-grain homebrew recipe with Fuggles and Simcoe hops. I was initially going to use Maris Otter for the base malt, but ended up going with US 2-Row. As I am a bit rusty at brewing, I missed my original gravity (OG) target of 1.050. Mash efficiency target was 84.8%, but I only achieved 72.2%. Issue was that I did not prep enough sparge water to wash the grains and that ended up costing me. I had the same issue a year ago with my Fat Robin Barleywine. When I this, I ended up adding about a pound of DME which brought the OG up to 1.057. (Probably could have added a bit less DME…maybe about a half pound.)
This beer had a very quick fermentation. When I racked it to secondary in mid-March after only two weeks in primary. The gravity was down to 1.016 so I waited a day for the solids to settle down a little and then bottled it.
Irish Plover — Irish Red Ale (9 D)
Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.66 gal
Boil Time: 75 min
End of Boil Vol: 5.98 gal Final Bottling Vol: 4.60 gal Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage
Equipment: Pot and Cooler ( 10 Gal Mash Tun, 7 Gal Pot) – All Grain
Efficiency: 72.20 % Est Mash Efficiency: 84.8 %
Amt Name Grain % IBU
7.5 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 73.2 %
1 lbs Munich I — 5-7L (6.0 SRM) 9.8 %
4 oz Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM) 2.4 %
4 oz Roasted Barley (525.0 SRM) 2.4 %
2 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) 1.2 %
2 oz Munich II — 10L (10.0 SRM) 1.2 %
1 lbs DME Amber (Briess) (10.5 SRM) 9.8 %
1 oz Fuggles [4.90 %] – Boil 60.0 min 14.8 IBUs
1/4 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins)
1 oz Simcoe [13.80 %] – Boil 5.0 min 8.3 IBUs
2 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 ml]
Est Original Gravity: 1.050 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.6 % Bitterness: 23.1 IBUs
Est Color: 17.5 SRM
Sparge Water: 5.12 gal
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F
Measured Original Gravity: 1.057 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.016 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.2 % Calories: 190.9 kcal/12oz
Total Grain Weight: 10 lbs 4.0 oz
Grain Temperature: 72.0 F Tun Temperature: 72.0 F
Mash PH: 5.20 (Assumed by Software, not measured)
Mashed at 154F for 45 mins and Fly Sparge
