Why is my red ale brown?

[Braufather]

Following Randy Moshers recipe for an American India red ale, that should have been deep reddish amber I ended up with A dark brown brew instead.

Recipe ( I used)

2.9 kg pale ale malt ( crisp finest Maris otter)

2.3 kg Munich malt ( Ireks Munich malt)

340 g medium crystal malt. ( crisp cara malt EBC 23 -32)

227g dark crystal malt ( crisp dark crystal malt)

57g black patent malt. ( crisp black malt)

Plugged it into brewers friend and it predicted a nice red colour so what happened?

And can I expect a brown coloured red ale, or have I created a brown ale?

 

[GerritT]

It might turn out brighter than it looks like at first sight. Happened to me a few times. "Tasting Beer" or "Radical Brewing" btw?

 

[Fil]

+1 give it time to mature clear and reveal its true nature..

if still not Red then perhaps a scalling error was made? afaik there are 3 scales for determining the colour impact of grains, SRM, Lovibond, and EBC, so when replicating a recipe you need to match both the scale used And its corresponding Value, i think a 120 ebc may equate to 60L, Ha no its not its about 60 srm after checking here .. https://www.brewtoad.com/tools/color-converter
but if overlooked its an easy way to screw up the colour of a beer your attempting to replicate..

 

[Zephyr259]

Yeah I had a similar issue recently, my father in law asked for a "red ale" what he actually meant by this was a regular bitter (amber), the software (grainfather's) took the GH London Bitter recipe and made it look like it was going to turn out fairly pale (15.6 EBC) so i added 50g of black malt to the 18L batch to give an estimated 24.5 EBC. The wort looked very similar to my brown ale and even fermented it looked pretty dark. As other have said I think it may lighten up once the sediment has dropped fully and then look lighter in the glass. Should be a Speckled Hen kinda colour, but I'll find out tomorrow night when I can crack open the first one.

If it's a bit dark then either the software doesn't give a good colour estimate (which I'd believe) or black malt does a lot more than expected.

 

[Braufather]

ok cheers chaps. so once again its about a bit of patience.

Most of the grain was by title ( EG dark crystal). The only one i had to choose was the medium crystal ( guessing EBC 32 was about 60 Lovibond, which i now see from that link is the other way round so its likely to be 14 Lovibond. so maybe i used very light crystal instead of medium, but that would make it lighter then? or maybe the medium crystal gives the redness, and i missed that out?)

It was from his radical brewing book.

Zephyr- we await with interest the result!

 

[foxbat]

2.3 kg Munich malt ( Ireks Munich malt)

This is the ingredient that will give a deep red colour if it's one of the darker ones. Did the recipe specify a colour rating for this?

 

[Braufather]

No, the recipe didn't state any colour guides just types. I selected ireks as it sat in the middle, but if i recall correctly it was nearer to a light munich malt as opposed to a dark one .

here is full list i used

Crisp Finest Maris Otter Pale Ale
IREKS Munich Malt (EBC 18 - 22)
Crisp Cara Malt (EBC 23-32)
Crisp Dark Crystal (EBC 380-435)
Crisp Black Malt (EBC 1100-1300)

 

[Simonh82]

I've had similar issues with red ales. I think some of it is about how you assess it. What does it look like if you hold it up to a bright light. I recently made a 'red' ale which came out as about 20 SRM on Brewer's friend but which looked quite dark brown to me. If you held it up to a light though, you could definitely see that it had a beautiful red hue.

There is some interesting info on the way beer colour is assessed on the Beersmith blog . For starters, the SRM number is based on a sample in a 1/2" tube, which isn't what we drink out of. Secondly, as it is a measurement made using 420nm (blue) light, it can't tell the difference between an amber and a red beer.

 

[Zephyr259]

Zephyr- we await with interest the result!

Had the first bottle last night and it's brown... Not as dark as a brown ale and it's red to the light but not what you think of when someone says a red/amber bitter.

However, it tastes amazing! Think it's the new brew fridge allowing me to hold at 20C Whitbread Ale yeast has a tonne of yummy fruity esters that didn't appear in my brown ale due to it being too cold.

 

[Braufather]

ok,so with my 57g of black malt I guess i shall expect the same, i'm fermenting at 18c with wyeast american ale.

 

[Ajhutch]

Nice thread chaps, good info. I remember reading somewhere (can't remember where sadly) that red was an incredibly difficult colour to achieve in a beer, guess this is evidence in favour of that view.

 

[DoctorMick]

Nice thread chaps, good info. I remember reading somewhere (can't remember where sadly) that red was an incredibly difficult colour to achieve in a beer, guess this is evidence in favour of that view.

Definitely, my recent red Ale turned out amber for some reason.