Irish Red adulterated

I don’t brew alot of beer…maybe 2 to 3 batches a year…but my favorite has always been an irish red. A close second would be a boston lager.
So I want to experiment a little and need some opinions on a couple ideas. First I would take an irish red extract kit and replace the included hops with German Hallertau and German Hasbrucker. These are the hops in a boston lager. I would add according to the lager instructions. Reason for this is the hop profile is the reason I like a boston lager.
Second, want to increase the OG significantly…to a alocohol by volume of 9 or 10 percent. I’m not a good enough brewer to know how to do this. The irish red kit comes with gold malt syrup. Should I increase the amount of gold malt syrup? And if so, by how much. Or should I use dextrose…or sucrose? I can calculate the amount of sugar to add if that would work.
The OG of the irish red kit is 1.044.
Comments???..
Thanks,
Ken

So, liking Beef Stew and Chicken Soup doesn’t mean you’ll like the results if you mix ingredients of the 2 recipes. BUT making the beer you want to drink is what this hobby is all about so don’t let me or anyone tell you not to try that.

Part of what makes the Irish red so awesome is that it’s an easy drinker. Jacking up the ABV will change that. So I’d recommend starting with a batch of “megalodon imperial red” from Northern. if you like that, it may be a better base from which to riff on the hop profile.

If you want to get serious about recipe design you should also look at BeerSmith. You can look at the recipes you have, and get a good idea how changes you want to make will impact the final beer. It also lets you track your revisions. I guarantee you won’t get it right after 3 tries, so given your pace change tracking and tasting Notes will be key.

1 Like

First, NB has a Boston lager clone here. That’s the kit I would use to build your ‘bigger’ beer. An Irish red is going to be much more ‘roasty’ then aBoston lager.
With that, if you want to bump the ABV I would suggest using a combo of the Pilsen malt syrup as well as the Amber DME that it uses in the recipe, along with your C60. Try to shoot for the same percentages with one caveat- I would substitute some of the extract with table sugar to help drive the FG down as the 9-10% ABV from an all extract beer will likely end with a higher FG. You’ll also need to add additional hops to maintain an appropriate BU:GU.
Last, you better get a lot of healthy yeast, especially if you’re using a traditional lager yeast at lager temps.
Any brewing program can easily help you figure out what you want.

2 Likes

The more you brew , the more you learn. And when you think you have all the answers , you will learn something else. That is the fun of this craft!!

I looked at the megalodon. Never knew NB has such a thing. I am very tempted to try this one first. No tweeks, just as they make it. One question, however, I see they do a late addition of malt syrup. So what’s the difference of adding the syrup late or at the onset of the boil? What does it change?
Thanks,
Ken

Adding the extract at the beginning will end up darkening the brew…
Sneezles61

In the process of making malt syrup it has already been boiled so no real need to do it again.