Irish and California Red Ales

4/24/12 bottling

Kyle Hixson and I bottled the CA and Irish Red Ales that we made together and had a chance to taste both of them. Here is their story, with some background:

13 or 14 gallons of wort boiling

When Kyle comes over, he brings his 15 gallon kettle with its removable false bottom. When doing 10 gallon batches, we mash and boil in Kyle’s large kettle. After mashing from Kyle’s kettle into my keg-kettle, we would transfer the wort back to Kyle’s kettle for the boil. This last transfer isn’t necessary, but we prefer to do it because the surface area of Kyle’s kettle allows the wort to heat and cool a little faster. Also, both the thermometer and spigot are welded, whereas my keg-kettle has one weldless fitting. All around, Kyle’s kettle is of higher quality so we tend to use it. He bought it from Beer, BeerMore Beer in Concord, CA.

As I mentioned before, using Kyle’s 15 gallon kettle for mashing allows us to do 10 gallons per batch of beer. We will split the wort into two 7 gallon fermenters so that we can use two yeast strains and get two unique beers. For example, we found a recipe online for a 5 gallon batch in the style we wanted, and doubled all the grain choices:

final gravity of both Irish and CA  were about1.018

22 lbs Maris Otter Pale

2 lbs Barley, Flaked

1 lb Crystal 75L

.5 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine

.5 lb oz Chocolate Malt

We also added .5 lb of black roasted barley

Hops schedule:
2 oz Centennial for 60 min
1 oz Amarillo for 30 min
1 oz Cascade for 10 min




My taste reviews:The CA Red used a 3rd generation WLP001 yeast that we started 3 days prior. The beer tastes like a thick, sweet red ale with medium to high carbonation. The most noticeable trait of the beer is the chocolaty finish. Although the maltniness of the body is sweet, the chocolate flavored finish is bittersweet and reminds me of baking chocolate. Little to zero bitterness and no noticeable hop smell.


The Irish Red used a 2nd generation White Labs yeast, Irish Ale (WLP004) which was used in a smoked porter before. The Irish Red has uniquely taken on some of those characteristics in the taste up front. Much like the CA, the maltiness is sweet and thick. But the finish is very different, considering they have the same ingredients: the Irish Red has a sweet carmel finish that can be tasted even in the nose. The carmel tone is smoky and slightly savory, which is sometimes attributed to mashing at too high of temperatures. However, the overall flavor isn't savory, per-se: I would classify the savoryness into more of a salted-carmel taste. This brings me back to the use of the smoked porter Irish yeast, coupled with the black roasted barley.

Overall, both the red ales came out very good but sweeter than I anticipated. In the future, I would look into using different fermentables and more carapils or dexterous malts. I feel that way because (1) the head retention was not on par with what we normally brew. An extra amount of carapils will improve this. (2) it turned out a little too sweet for my taste, yet both fermented out as much as I could get them to go, to an ABV of 5.7%. I would want to research what could make the beer up to a healthy 6.5% with a more dry taste up front.