I am fairly new to brewing and have only done 4 batches so far. I really love the taste of the Sam Adams Irish Red beer and would love to make a clone of it with extract brewing. I would really appreciate any help in making this possible. This is all the information I have gathered about it so far.

Sam Adams Irish Red
5.5% ABV

Pale Malts
Caramel Malts

East Kent Goldings Hops


I would greatly appreciate any help with coming up with a recipe for extract.


Suggestions from Brewers Roundtable

• Book of 641 Clone Brew Recipes
• Homebrew Recipes for 150 Commercial Beers by Tess Szamatulski
• North American Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for Your Favorite American and Canadian Beers
• Cooper's All-in-one Home Brewing Kits. 6 Gallons of brewery crafted beer.
• The Beer Machine - Make world class beer in 7 days - Great Gift Idea

I haven't drunk any Sam Adams but I have some ingredients that were recomended to me for a 'Red Irish' by a guy at the brewstore (and I was put on the right track here as well.) This isn't a recipe, just a sketch.

Muntons premium bitter
Muntons gold yeast
Goldings Hops, 15grams was recomended but I have extra goldings hop pellets I'm going to use, maybe 30grams total.
500grams light dry malt extract
There is also a kilogram of Brewcraft #70 Kit Converter (English bitter) which looks like blend of mainly dextrose, with some dried corn syrup and light malt - its probably been hopped too.
And for redness about 100grams of crystal malt grain.

I'm planning on adding some Hallertau hops as well - I love hops - and aroma hops go well with crystal grains I think. I'm also going to add some black malt grain, not much though maybe 40grams, for that burnt bitter taste.

Hope that helps a little, but I'm sure some people here will have some great ideas.

Using the information you provided I came up with a quick and dirty recipe for an Irish Red using BeerTools.

Here is the recipe I got:

=====================================
Your recipe results for "Irish Red" have been sent to your e-mail address on file.

BeerTools.com Recipe Results E-mail

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Irish Red
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

General
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category: Scottish and Irish Ale
Subcategory: Irish Red Ale
Recipe Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 6 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 72 %
Total Grain/Extract: 10.50 lbs.
Total Hops: 1.0 oz.
Calories (12 fl. oz.): 212.2
Cost to Brew: $23.25 (USD)
Cost per Bottle (12 fl. oz.): $0.44 (USD)

Ingredients
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.5 lbs. English 2-row Pale
1 lbs. American Caramel 80°L
1 oz. Goldings (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
Yeast: WYeast 1084 Irish Ale

Notes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Vital Statistics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original Gravity: 1.054
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 14.35 SRM
Bitterness: 20.1 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.5 %

--
Results prepared by BeerTools.com
http://www.beertools.com/



This recipes matches all of the stylistic parameters so this recipe should be a good starting point to work from.

Here is a summary of them given from BeerTools:


Predicted Irish Red Ale Compliance
Original Gravity 1.054 1.044 - 1.060 100 %
Terminal Gravity 1.012 1.010 - 1.014 100 %
Color 14.35 °SRM 9.00 - 18.00 °SRM 100 %
Bitterness 20.1 IBU 17.00 - 28.00 IBU 100 %
Alcohol (%volume) 5.5 % 4.00 - 6.00 % 100 %
100 % overall

I realize the above table is kind of hard to read. Sorry about that.

If you substitute 80 L Crystal Malt you get the same results. The terms Crystal and Carmel Malt are used interchangeably though according to Gregg Noonan there actually is a difference in terms of flavor.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Scott

Oops!

Sorry about that I did not read your posting correctly and I sort of missed the part about this being an extract beer.

Okay once again using BeerTools I have a quick and dirty extract recipe that should be a good starting point for this clone.The alcohol content is 5.4% ABV which is pretty close.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Irish Red - Extract
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

General
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category: Scottish and Irish Ale
Subcategory: Irish Red Ale
Recipe Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 6 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 72 %
Total Grain/Extract: 6.50 lbs.
Total Hops: 1.0 oz.
Calories (12 fl. oz.): 208.9
Cost to Brew: $25.50 (USD)
Cost per Bottle (12 fl. oz.): $0.48 (USD)

Ingredients
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 lbs. American Caramel 80°L
3.5 lbs. Dry Light Extract
2 lbs. Dry Amber Extract
1 oz. Goldings (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
Yeast: WYeast 1084 Irish Ale

Notes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Vital Statistics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original Gravity: 1.053
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 14.83 SRM
Bitterness: 20.2 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.4 %

--
Results prepared by BeerTools.com
http://www.beertools.com/

==================================
Here are the recipe parameters with respect to fitting the style guidelines based upon color, alcohol content and bitterness.

Original Gravity 1.053 1.044 - 1.060 100 %
Terminal Gravity 1.012 1.010 - 1.014 100 %
Color 14.83 °SRM 9.00 - 18.00 °SRM 100 %
Bitterness 20.2 IBU 17.00 - 28.00 IBU 100 %
Alcohol (%volume) 5.4 % 4.00 - 6.00 % 100 %

Sorry once again for being a total space case.

- Scott

Now that looks good, I may have to give it a whirl. Call me an idiot but I am going to ask anyway. Would Spalz hops work in place of the Gouldings? I am still learning about the flavors so I am going to ask first. I have spaltz but can get the gouldings if needed.

Stylistically speaking Spalz hops should work fine.

Irish Reds tend to have no hop aroma or flavor. So if the only hop addition is for bittering then type of hop does not make a whole lot of difference. I believe some hop character may come through from bittering hops but I doubt if it is really all that significiant.

Of course, the Samuel Adams' version may not strictly adhere to style guidelines so one may need to adjust the recipe accordingly. In that case Goldings should probably be used if possible if you have your heart set on emulating that particular beer.

- Scott

Thanks Scott, I do like the spalz hops and I am not too worried about style guidelines because it will probably just be me drinking it. Sorry for the sidetrack Brad.

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous posting is that one thing to keep in mind is that the alpha acid percentage of the spalz will likely differ from the value I used for the Goldings. For that matter, since the number I used was an average value many Goldings hops may differ as well.

You just need to adjust the amount of hops added so that the Homebrew Bittering Units (HBU) are the same. For those that may not know, HBUs are simply the amount of hops used multipled by their percent alpha acids. In the example above I used 1 oz of 5% alpha acid Goldings so the HBUs would be 5. If one had a hop with an alpha acid of 2.5% then you would used 2 ounces to get the same HBUs.

- Scott

It may not be traditional (actually I have to admit it's not) but I find the crystal grains that give redness go so well with aroma hops. Otherwise I imagine you would just have the bitter plus the toffee flavour from what doesn't ferment out of those grains, and the aroma takes it somehwere else. (Even with extract you can boil 100 or so grams of crystal grain for colour and strain them into the mix just as you would bittering hops.)