Homebrew Beer Blog

Red’s Rye from Founder’s BC in Grand Rapids is an interesting beer and one of my favorite Michigan beers. As the name suggests, it’s a red beer with a big hop punch loaded with Amarillo hops. I thought I remember reading the beer is named after Red, who is pictured on the bottle, but I couldn’t find a reference of this, so maybe I’m just making it up.

When I went to buy a bottle for this post, Oades was out and the guy said they’ve been out for a few weeks and he wasn’t sure they were going to get any more in. I almost jumped across the counter, but he started talking about it being a seasonal and bla, bla, so he was just misinformed. As it turned out, they got a shipment in later that day and I got a few singles to enjoy.

Labeled as a Red Ale made with Rye, Founder’s describes the beer as Pours a spectacular crimson red with a creamy tan head. Brewed with four varieties of Belgian caramel malts imparting a sweet richness. Red’s Rye is impressively balanced with its hop bitterness and huge citrus bouquet achieved from the immense amarillo dry hop. The generous amount of malted rye used accentuates a spicy crisp finish. The specs include 6.4% ABV, 68 IBUs, and cellared for 6 months. That cellaring is kind of interesting on a big hoppy beer.

In my research, Founders holds this recipe close to its vest. Doing some reading, I found it contains about 20% rye malt with Amarillo hops and that’s about all I could find. I took that, the Web description, and sat down with a pint to put together a rough recipe. I then went looking for some input from the brewery.

I got positive feedback on Magnum for bittering and Amarillo throughout for flavor/aroma. They also indicated the malts were US Pale 2-row, CaraPils, a light crystal, dark crystal, and my additions of Aromatic and CaraMunich seemed fine. They also said to scale back my rye malt from 20% overall, so I put it in at about 20% of the base malt. I figured in an OG of 1.063 with 68 IBUs, 17 SRM. They also said to ferment it a little warmer than 67, so I’ll guessed 68 with WLP001.

So, there’s info from the brewery for anyone looking to formulate something. For the heck of it, I’ll post my recipe that I’m tossing in the hopper to brew some day, but just note that this is my untried guess to get you going.

OG = 1.063, 68 IBUs, 17 SRM

65.6% US Pale
15.6% Rye
06.3% CaraMunich
04.7% C40
03.1% C120
03.1% CaraPils
01.6% Aromatic

Xoz Magnum @ 60
1oz Amarillo @ 20
1oz Amarillo @ 10
1oz Amarillo @ 1
2oz Amarillo @ DH

Mash @ 154
WLP001 @ 68-degrees

What’s kind of got me scratching my head is that I’m not counting four caramel malts as described on the Webpage. I don’t think of Aromatic as a caramel malt, but maybe it is. Originally I had Special B in the recipe, but it was crossed out by the brewery. Home brewers may want to tinker with the rye additions, and my percentages are just guesses, so use your discretion. If I were to cellar this, I’d probably split the dry hop up to put the second half in when ready to serve. Cheers!