15A Irish Red Ale
NZ Rich Red Ale
ABV4.2% OG1.052 FG1.020 IBU24Grain bill
| Gladfield Ale Malt | 4.4 kg | 78% |
| Gladfield RedBack Malt | 0.5 kg | 8.9% |
| Gladfield Shepherds Delight Malt | 0.3 kg | 5.3% |
| Gladfield Munich Malt | 0.2 kg | 3.5% |
| Gladfield Medium Crystal Malt | 0.2 kg | 3.5% |
| Gladfield Light Chocolate Malt | 0.04 kg | 0.7% |
Adjuncts
| Whirlfloc | 1 g @ 10 min |
| Yeast Nutrient | 5 g @ 10 min |
Hop schedule
| Hop | 60 min | 15 min | WP 75°C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Jade | 18g | · | · |
| Superdelic | · | 20g | 35g |
| Pacific Gem | · | · | 15g |
Yeast
| LalBrew Nottingham | 2 packets, dry pitched |
Water additions
| Calcium Chloride | 4 g |
| Calcium Sulfate | 1.5 g |
| Magnesium Sulfate | 1.5 g |
About This Beer
Robin’s third all-grain batch and the first built to be led by malt rather than hops. A deep-red New Zealand take on an Irish Red: RedBack and Shepherds Delight drive the garnet colour and a toasted, cola, dried-fruit character, Medium Crystal adds caramel and rounds off the Shepherds Delight, and a little Light Chocolate brings cocoa depth without tipping into roast harshness.
The hop bill is all New Zealand and deliberately restrained. Pacific Jade bitters, soft and low-cohumulone. Superdelic drives the fruit at 15 minutes and the whirlpool, with Pacific Gem alongside for blackberry depth that echoes the dark malt. No dry hop; the hops support the malt rather than leading.
Brew day
Mashed in at 3:15pm on 15 July 2026, boil away at 5:05pm.
Water treated chloride-forward to push malt over hops, the inverse of the sulfate bias Robin runs on his IPAs. Mash held on the high side to defend body against Nottingham’s dry finish.
Whirlpool by recirculation, held 30 minutes, which puts hop flavour and bitterness a little above what a shorter stand would give.
The gravity is the loose thread. It was not read until day two, with the airlock already going and a few points fermented out, so the brew-day figure is back-calculated rather than measured. Read OG on brew day; everything downstream inherits it.
Fermentation
Two packets of Nottingham, chosen over S-04 for a clean, highly attenuative profile without S-04’s diacetyl risk. Airlock visibly bubbling by next morning, a clean lag well under a day on a fresh double pitch. Robin’s house is a modern build with climate control holding steady, and the fermenter sat warm within Nottingham’s target band for the whole of primary.
It finished sweet and full, which is what it was drawn up to do. The saccharification rest ran warm and favours long-chain dextrins the yeast cannot ferment, and the grist carries close to 18% specialty malt. None of RedBack, Shepherds Delight, Medium Crystal or Light Chocolate brings diastatic power, and crystal malts are caramelised inside the husk long before they reach the mash tun.
Worth carrying forward: strain datasheets quote attenuation measured on an all-base-malt standard wort, so a published figure describes the yeast rather than the beer you built. On a malt-forward red the mash temperature and the caramel fraction set the finish, and the FG target has to be read off those instead.
Bottled
Bottled 1 August 2026 after 17 days in primary, around 2.25 L given up to trub and yeast cake. Bottle conditioned, with two to four weeks of ageing to let the Shepherds Delight mellow.
Seventeen days at a steady 18 to 20°C on a fresh double pitch is roughly three times what Nottingham needs on a wort this size, so this is terminal, though no stable-gravity check was run to prove it on paper. What is left is dextrin and caramelised sugar rather than fermentable extract, so no over-carbonation risk in the bottle.
No tasting notes yet.