Brewday: Hansard's Delight Red IPA

My friend Luke enjoyed the Shepherd's Delight Red IPA, a Little Creatures Single Batch released sometime in 2013. He has a hunger for hoppy beers and asked me if I could brew a Red IPA. I said 'sure' and whipped up a recipe. That was at least 6 months ago and I never got around to brewing it. So I'm trying to mend my ways with my first brew for 2014.

The idea for this one is a deep red colour leaning towards black. People on the AHB forum recommend a combination of 5% CaraAroma and 1% Roast Barley to achieve a red colour so I went with that and made up the remaining 94% with Golden Promise and some munich malt. This was a chance to focus on presentation both in terms of colour and clarity so I hope it comes out with something that can be legitimately called red, not brown. The results during the brew looked promising.

For hops I went with a modest first wort hop addition and then added a heap of Galaxy and Centennial at the end of the boil for a hit of passionfruit, citrus and floral hops. Then there was another heavy dose of Centennial alongside Columbus for the dry hopping. I went for bitterness on the high end of the IPA scale (it's got an estimated 70 IBUs) to give it a decent bitter kick with the high level of malt flavour.

This was Luke's first experience of the brewing process from start to finish and it was fun to introduce him to the process behind the beer he drinks.

Hansard's Delight Red IPA (21L batch)

Luke very seriously adding the final hops

OG: 1.063 (1.061 measured)
FG: 1.011
IBU: 70 (estimated)
EBC: 34.2
ABV: 6.6%

79% Golden Promise malt
15% Best Malz Munich malt
5% Weyermann CaraAroma
1% Roast Barley

25g Columbus @ FWH min
60g Centennial @ 0 min
40g Galaxy @ 0 min
50g Centennial @ dry hop
50g Columbus @ dry hop

Starter of WLP 090, for an estimated pitch of 300 billion cells

8g CaSO4, 3g CaCl2, 3g MgSO4 went into the mash to get calcium up and raise the sulphate level to enhance the perception of the bitterness. I also added 2.5ml of lactic acid for pH correction.

Stepped mash: 64C (45 minutes), 72C (15 minutes) with a mash out at 78C

90 seconds of O2

04/01/14 - Brewed with Luke