[quote:34zmohsh]I've been giving this one some thought, and I reckon that up until the early 1960s there wasn't one. Irish red ale (a term, like so many others we use, invented in the late '70s by Michael Jackson) is a product of the consolidation and modernisation of Irish breweries. Iorwerth writes that when Guinness took over Smithwick's the Kilkenny brewery was producing a pale ale called Smithwick's No. 1. When Guinness decided, in 1965, that kegged draught beer was the way to go they reformulated it to make it less bitter and more appealling to the mass market. This, I suspect, was the point where the Irish red departed from English bitter.
[/quote:34zmohsh]Good point. Modern day Irish Reds tend to have very little hop character. They can start a little sweet but they finish drier as they tend to use a pinch of roast barley and a neutral yeast compared to some of the fruity English yeasts. (Do they use the same yeasts as the Irish Stouts?) You sometimes hear that they are more like Scottish Ales than English Ales but I'm not too sure if this is accurate.
