St. Patty's Day Preps

I've gotten started on my St. Pat's Day brewing. I cooked up the "Irish Red" a couple weeks ago (see recipe and link below), and am getting ready to brew up the stout tomorrow. I put Irish Red in quotations because this didn't come out very Irish, or Red. Everything went according to plan, mash went well, and I even hit my original and final gravities dead on. But a first sampling was a bit disappointing. This tasted more like a cross between a brown and pale ale. The color is one of a dark caramel wheat, a slight fruit note in the nose (fermented a bit high, around 67), and a decent balance between malt and bitter, tending toward the bitter end. This is not at all what I wanted, and am pretty disappointed. I know it's still very young and will surly improve with some again, but it will not transform into what I was expecting to have brewed. It's not that close. I'm considering passing this off to someone if they want it and making a fresh batch from a different recipe. But I don't have time to brew. This weekend is set for the stout, next weekend I'm away, and brewing on the 14th only gives me a month to age. That's not quite enough (it wouldn't be awful, but I'm certain it wouldn't be great either).

In the meantime I've been procrastinating kegging my Ordinary Bitter even though I've been looking forward to drinking this since I first tried it. And have also been lazy about bottling the Rye IPA. So much work, never enough time.