Homebrew - Irish Red Ale

Decided do brew on my birthday as a present to myself. Earlier in the month I used the Midwest Hombrewing Groupon to get some more equipment, it came with an Irish Red extract kit which I thought would be a relaxing brew to do. I also got a bunch of new brew equipment for my birthday including a wine thief to make it easier to take gravity readings of the beer.

The brewing went very smoothly and even after several beers I did not drop anything into the boil that was not supposed to be there. This was the first time I tried adding Irish moss to clarify the brew, I was interested to see what it would do. The wine thief did make it insanely easy to read the gravity, I corrected it for temperature using an online calculator. The kit had a target starting gravity of 1.042-1.046. So far so good.

When I racked it there was some floating clumps of stuff, this is normal but they were larger clumps than I had seen before. I think this might have been the effect of the Irish moss since that was the only different thing I did. There was a huge amount of crap at the bottom of the fermenter and the beer was crystal clear which suggests the moss did do the trick. By the time we bottled a little more crap had collected in the secondary but no where near as much as I had seen without Irish moss. The beer looked very clear and tasted great straight out of the siphon.

Ingredients: Irish Red Ale, Extract kit from Midwest Hombrewing Supply    
Brew:        25 Sep 2011, OG 1.045
Rack:        09 Oct 2011 (14)
Bottle:      23 Oct 2011 (14), FG 1.012, ABV 4.4%
Ready:       12 Nov 2011 (20)
Summary:     Primary 14 days, Secondary 14 days, Condition 20 days

Made a mistake and opened one after only 2 weeks. It was already carbonated and looked good, it was very clear. It tasted very home brewy and a bit watery. That's when I realized it was not time yet :)

Tried again after 3 weeks which was the actual plan. Still looks good and very clear. Flavor mellowed a bit, tastes much better, a little bitter which I like. Still smells very home brewy. Very little head retention. Drinkable, would let people try one, definitely not the best brew I've done though.

UPDATE 13/Dec/2011
I have been drinking these for a few weeks now and they have been slowly improving. Tonight I drank a 24 and the flavors had mellowed a lot, I really enjoyed drinking it. So instead of 20 days conditioning in the bottle it should have been left at least 50.

Brew

Rack

Bottle

Ready