This morning I did probably the most technically challenging beer of the set, the red ale. I haven’t had much luck with them, consistently turning out brown ales instead of getting that red color. When I was at Homebrew Headquarters picking up the ingredients, I got some tips on another way to do it. So instead of steeping the roasted barley along with the rest of the specialty grains, I waited until everything was out and I was bringing it up to a boil. At that point, I put just the roasted barley in a hop sack and repeatedly dunked it until I got a color that looked good. It may be a little light, but it’s going to be a lot closer to red than my previous attempts. Yeast has been pitched and it’s in the old fermentation chamber since the stout and brown ale are still in the chest freezer. They’ll get kegged tomorrow or Monday and then I’ll be ready to do the hefeweizens.