15A Irish Red Ale
NZ Rich Red Ale
Grain 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
Brewed by Robin on 15 July 2026 — currently fermenting. OG came in at 1.048 with about 24L into the fermenter. Fermentation, packaging and tasting notes to follow. Print the brew-day sheet to take to the shed.
Robin’s third all-grain batch, and the first one built to be led by malt rather than hops. After a Red IPA and a West Coast IPA, this is a deep-red, malt-forward New Zealand take on an Irish Red: Gladfield RedBack and Shepherds Delight drive the garnet colour and a layered toasted / dried-fruit / cola character, Medium Crystal adds caramel sweetness and rounds off the Shepherds Delight, and 40g of Light Chocolate brings a whisper of cocoa depth without tipping into roast harshness.
The hop bill is all New Zealand and deliberately restrained. Pacific Jade does the bittering at 60 minutes — soft and low-cohumulone, around 24 IBU on paper. Superdelic is the fruit driver in both a 15-minute flavour role and the whirlpool, with a touch of Pacific Gem alongside it for blackberry depth that echoes the dark malt. No dry hop: the hops support the malt here, they don’t lead.
Brew Day
Mash in at 3:15pm with 20L in the brewer, 60 minutes at 67°C — deliberately on the high side to defend body against Nottingham’s dry finish — then mash out at 75°C. 17L for the sparge. Water treated chloride-forward to push malt over hops: 4.0g calcium chloride against just 1.5g each of calcium sulfate and magnesium sulfate, the inverse of the sulfate bias Robin runs on his IPAs.
Pre-boil volume measured 30L, topped up by 1.5L. Boil away at 5:05pm with 18g Pacific Jade in for 60 minutes, 20g Superdelic at 15, and a Whirlfloc tablet plus 5g yeast nutrient at 10.
Whirlpool by recirculation at 75°C with 35g Superdelic and 15g Pacific Gem. The plan called for 20 minutes but the timing ran long at the back end of the day and it went closer to 30 — no harm done, though total IBU and hop flavour will land a little above the ~28 IBU estimate.
About 24L into the fermenter, a litre over target. OG was read on the hydrometer somewhere between 1.048 and 1.050, recorded conservatively as 1.048. That’s under the 1.053 target, but the extra volume explains most of it — roughly the same total extract, just spread a bit thinner.
Fermentation
Two packets of LalBrew Nottingham, chosen over S-04 for its clean, highly attenuative profile and tolerance of cellar-temp placement fermentation through a New Zealand winter with no temperature chamber. By the next morning the airlock was visibly bubbling — a clean lag of well under a day on a fresh double pitch.
Still fermenting at the time of writing. The plan is bottle conditioning to around 2.2 volumes, with two to four weeks of ageing to let the Shepherds Delight mellow.