Smoked red ale recipe

[Troutman47]

Seymour, was wondering what your opinion is please.
I normally batch prime with 80grams of household sugar but was thinking of using 100grams in this smoked ale.

What do you think?

Cheers

[Troutman47]

Bottled today with 100 grams of sugar.

Tasted really good, the smoke was a bit stronger than I hoping but I would expect that to mellow during conditioning.

All in all, well pleased

[seymour]

Sorry for the delayed reply. Yes, I think 100 grams priming sugar was a good idea. A bit higher carbonation, more German than English in style, which it is. Well played. Can't wait to hear what you think of the final bottle-conditioned beer. Cheers!

[Troutman47]

Hi Seymour,
Well the ale has had three days in my heated airing cupboard, I'm going away tomorrow for four days and planning on taking a crate of it with me. So I had to try one tonight to make sure it was ok.

I know I'm biased, but God it's good!!

The smokiness has mellowed but is the pronounced flavour, the body is good, the mouthfeel is good, it's smooth, no detectable bitterness but obviously lacking in carbonation.
It's only three days old but I'm already impressed!

Hopefully on Friday night the family will enjoy it as much as me!!

Regards.

[Troutman47]

Hi all, really enjoyed this beer, however, I'm changing it slightly for my next brew.
I'm going to up the ABV slightly from 4.2% to 4.5% but the main change is less crystal and the addition of Carafa Special 3.
The reason being is to change the colour slightly and hopefully make it more red than brown.

I've been reading that to make a beer red add roasted barley and although I have some the Carafa is older but also German to go with the Rauchmalt.
So the expected colour using morey will go from 20.1 to 24.9 but should be more red, fingers crossed!

Grain bill:-
MO 68.1%
Rauchmalt 20.4%
Crystal 120, 10%
Carafa Special 3, 1.5%

Chinook 12% AA, 21.8 IBU (all of boil)

Any thoughts welcome.

Cheers

[Troutman47]

Well I've made a second batch of this.
Changed the recipe slightly...

23l brew length
MO 3.114kg 68.1%
Rauchmalt 935g 20.4%
Crystal 120 456g 10%
Carafa special 3 68g 1.5%

Chinook 12%AA. 16g all of boil

Gervin English ale yeast

I used the carafa special 3 to change the colour to a more red colour. EBC 24.9.
Plus it was old stock that needed to be used up

To me, this beer has a good balance between sweetness and bitterness and a smokey flavour that not overpowering,
It's so smooth and moorish!

A great beer IMO!

[seymour]

Sure sounds tasty to me. Cheers!

[daf]

This sounds amazing, thanks for the recipe!

[Troutman47]

This sounds amazing, thanks for the recipe!

Let me know how it turns out!

Cheers!

[Fido97]

I brewed a smoked beer at the weekend - used 25% smoked malt, munich (15%) and cara munich (5%) and the rest pale malt. Northern Brewer hops about 25g at the start and another 25 on flameout. As its freezing cold at present I decided to run with a bog standard lager yeast. We should compare notes maybe once its ready to drink.

[Troutman47]

Good idea, maybe exchange a bottle or 2?

Did you use the Rauchmalt?

Be interesting how the flame out hops work with the smoke flavour.
I thought there might be a conflict so I just used bittering hops and let the Rauchmalt do the talking.

SWMBO loves this one!!

[Kingfisher4]

I brewed a smoked beer at the weekend - used 25% smoked malt, munich (15%) and cara munich (5%) and the rest pale malt. Northern Brewer hops about 25g at the start and another 25 on flameout. As its freezing cold at present I decided to run with a bog standard lager yeast. We should compare notes maybe once its ready to drink.

Would really like to try smoked malt in my next brew.
As I don’t want to do a dark ale or porter, this thread looks ideal. Any further feedback or smoked malt in paler ale recipes would be of great interest.
Has anyone got a particular favourite in this style.?