Kit Recipe Modification

I really don't think the changes you are making will make that big of a difference. The DME split addition will only produce a slightly lighter color...no effect on flavor or aroma. Spreading out the hop additions really doesn't make sense to me, for this style, and I think you'll only see a minute difference in taste and aroma from that change. An Irish Red Ale is a brew that highlights the malt more than the hops, so those hops are intended to play second fiddle. I think these changes will have very little effect.

If you want to change it up, adding some different hops, more taste and aroma dominant hops, would be the easiest way.

 

I helped a buddy of mine brew this for his first homebrew kit. It's not really an Irish red by style. It's more of a less sweet killians without the adjunct twang. Or an American Amber ale but less sweet/crystal-y and much less hoppy. You could pick up an ounce of interesting hops and dose it at the end of the boil. Overall it does not have much for flaws to hide behind like people usually recommend. Otherwise I would follow the schedule in the instructions.

 

There are steeping grains with this kit. You could change them around or add to them.
.5# cara 8
.25 # special roast
.125 # biscuit
.125# pale chocolate.
However, the grains looks tasty to me. It uses my ace in the hole, pale chocolate, so it is bound to be good. If I were making an Irish red from scratch, I probably would not think to use special roast and biscuit but I would probably use one type of kilned malt. Still, I'm not likely to change this aspect of the kit. My recollection is that they send steeping grains as a mixture, so you can add but cannot take away.

What yeast are you using? The have an interesting range of suggestions - Nottingham, 1272, and 051. I like 1272, but was surprised they didn't suggest 1084 (irish ale yeast). I also really like 1469 (West Yorkshire). If you are a dry yeast user and looking at Nottingham, you might consider that there are some other dry yeast options out there. I think I would personally choose Windsor to make an Irish Red as it has a little more fruity esters to it than Nottingham. There is an old BA thread on Mangrove Jack dry yeasts, which you could look up. I believe they offered several English type strains that might be appropriate, but I never used them. It looks like Northern Brewer does not sell them, so you may need to go elsewhere if that is an option you pursue

 

Oh, the things you could do!
- Get a can of briess Munich LME and substitute that for half of the DME.
- Buy another ounce of Willamette and add it at 10 or FO.
- Maybe ferment it with a Belgian yeast.

 

personally I like the idea of splitting the extract additions - when I brewed extract, I seemed to get better results doing that, for some reason.
I'm not as big a fan of the hop thing. Personally, I would keep the bittering hops as instructed, the 1 oz at 60 min.
If I was going to make a change, it would be to move the Goldings to 15 - 10 minutes out. A style like this doesn;t require big hop additions, but IMO 30 minutes doesn;t do a lot - most of the flavor and aromatics has been driven off, but it's not really enough for bittering.

 

I'm with the majority here, that your proposed changes won't have much effect, but you won't know that until you do it (and then you won't have a comparison to know it unless you've brewed this recipe before), so go ahead.

My only caution is that there is a high degree of scorch potential when using LME because it sinks to the bottom of the boil kettle and gets scorched when you add flame again, so if you're adding it twice and in smaller quantity each time, you're at an even higher risk. Just be sure to stir that stuff into the wort very well before you add flame to the kettle.