Last Updated on April 10, 2024 by Doug Hall
We ordered an Irish Red beer recipe from More Beer back in January. We recently ordered 2 recipes from Northern Brewer and they sent us an Irish Red Ale recipe kit by mistake, which they told us to keep.
So, we decided it was a great time to compare the Irish Red recipes from 2 of our top-ranked online beer stores.
More Beer Irish Red Recipe Ingredients
As usual, we went with the extract recipe. The recipe we ordered came with the following:
6 lbs Light Dry Extract
Specialty Grains
- 1 lb Crystal 120
- 8 oz Abbey
- 8 0z Caramunich
- 2 oz Roasted barley
- 2 oz Specialty B
Hops
- 1.5 oz Northern Brewer
- 2 oz Willamette
Yeast: White Labs WLP004 Irish
The recipes from More Beer also come with a Whirfloc clarifying tablet. They also usually include a cheesecloth sock/bag for steeping the specialty grains.
Northern Brewer Irish Red Beer Recipe Ingredients
As with More Beer, we went with the liquid malt extract (LME) option. The kit included the following ingredients:
6 lbs Gold Malt Syrup
Specialty Grains
- 0.5 lbs Belgian Cara 8
- 0.25 lbs Briess Special Roast
- 0.125 lbs Belgian Biscuit
- 0.125 English Chocolate Malt
Hops
- 1 oz Willamette
- 1 oz Goldings
Yeast: LalBrew Nottingham English Ale Dry yeast
Cooking the More Beer Irish Red Beer Recipe
This is a relatively easy recipe to cook. Both recipe kits involve a 60-minute boil. Our More Beer recipe included liquid yeast that did not require rehydration. Just simply pitch it after you have cooled the wort and brought the overall volume to just over 5 gallons.
We cooked the More Beer recipe about 4 weeks before the recipe from Northern Brewer
Fermentation Was Active!
Within 6 hours, the airlock started bubbling. After 12 hours it was bubbling like crazy. The majority of the fermentation was done in 4 days. I let the beer stay in the fermenter for another 14 days before bottling.
I opened the first bottle after 2 weeks of conditioning. The always gratifying woosh sound when popping the cap told me it was carbonated.
More Beer Irish Red tasting notes:
Right away, I noticed a striking similarity to Killians but with much more flavor. It was very malt forward. Just a hint of the barley I steeped. Just a slight hint of bitterness at the end but not dominant. It has a very distinctive caramel flavor.
The Color was a deep red.
The ABV came in at 4.7%.
More Beer posts this on their product page:
Cooking the Northern Brewer Irish Red Beer Recipe
Another 60-minute boil and a relatively simple recipe to cook. They provide very easy-to-follow instructions.
This recipe came with dry yeast that required rehydration. One of the few extras I have acquired was a beaker with a foam stopper and a stir plate specifically designed to aerate and rehydrate dry yeast.
The one I acquired was called the “Wort Whipper” It is $40 at More Beer. Put the metal stir bar (sanitized) in the bottom of the beaker. The magnetic plate has a nob to control the spin.
TIP: You might consider buying extra stir bars. More than once I have poured the yeast, and bar into the fermenting bucket. More than once I forget to fish the stir bar out of the trub when I rack beer out of the primary fermenting bucket.
As with the More Beer recipe, this started bubbling within 6 hours and fermentation was complete in about 5 days. We left the beer for 13 more days and bottled it on the 18th day.
Northern Brewer Irish Red tasting notes:
I tried the first bottle after 7 days and got the woosh sound to tell me it had been carbonated and was ready to drink.
This beer was more crisp and clean than the recipe from More Beer. You can taste a bit of the toastiness that came from the steeping grains. It is sweeter than the More Beer recipe. There’s no discernable bitterness. It is lower in alcohol and a very drinkable beer. It would probably be a good beer to wean your friends off of the mass-produced crap they are used to drinking.
The color was a deep copper, not too much different from the More Beer Irish Red.
The ABV came in at 4.5%.
Here’s a picture of the 2 beers side by side.
As you can see, the color is almost identical. They both have a deep rich copper color.
Overall Winner
More Beer! In my opinion, it was superior to the recipe from Northern Brewer. It was more aromatic from the grains and malt, even a touch of caramel. Yet the late edition of 2 ounces of Willamette hops allows a spicy aroma.
The More Beer Irish Red Recipe had a complexity and depth of flavor that wasn’t present in the recipe from Northern Brewer. As we said above, it has a similar flavor profile to Killian’s but with much more flavor.
Don’t get me wrong, the Northern Brewer Irish Red beer is smooth and easy to drink.
- Mango Kolsch Beer Recipe Review - May 2, 2024
- Helles Lager Beer Recipe Review - May 2, 2024
- What is the Beer Bitterness Scale? IBU Simplified - April 24, 2024