Black IPA

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orangeandblue302

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Has anyone had success brewing up a black IPA?

I fell in love with the Victory Yakima Twilight and my local Breweries, Iron Hill, Black IPA and would love to try one out for a new homebrew.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
 
One of the earliest brews I made was Jon Maier's Blackened Brutal Bitter kit from morebeer.com. It's very good stuff. The recipe is pretty easy to find out there.
 
I make a red one (just throw in a little black patent), but it's certainly not enough to change the flavor. I've never tried a black IPA, but I've kinda toyed with the concept.
 
I guess I need to track one of these down. The concept just sounds disgusting to me. Is it an IPA with enough BP to make it black, or is it a hoppy stout?
 
i did one with leftovers from a bunch of grains and hops i had. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/everything-but-kitchen-sink-ipa-help-87018/
honestly at first it was really bad, the malt wasn't in ballance with the hops and it just had this funky taste to it. After about a month and a half if not longer everything melded and its quite good. I used the carafa to cap the mash with when i sparged to add color but i didint use enough and it turned out very dark but not black. Its very enjoyable at this point though but it did take a few months
 
I had one from Tied House in San Jose which was horrible. It tasted like a burnt stout with a bitter kick at the end, not very subtle at all.

I believe Stone makes one called Subliminally Self Righteous. I had this at a double IPA festival. It was my first experience with a black IPA and was very surprised to have a beer look like a stout/porter, but taste like a double IPA.

My guess would be to add some BP or dark Crystal Malt to your IPA recipe to give it some color.
 
there are malty black ipa's and then there is a normal ipa which is just darkened but there is no roasty or malty flavor contributions. The first one is very strange- when you get a dark beer you expect dark and they are very light and refreshing. Stones sublimly self righteous is pretty damn good- if you havent tried it i would try and get some for comparison
 
Use dehusked Carafa to get a lot of color and deep malt flavor without the acrid/burnt notes of roasted barley or black patent.

Agreed. I made the Stone 11 clone and it was fantastic. One of my buddies made it too and it turned out great.

The dehusked Carafa is the key. Just enough of a roasty note without turning it into a stout
 
This sounds like the perfect beer for debittered black malt. Same thing as dehusked Carafa, just not trademarked.
 
The dehusked Carafa is the key. Just enough of a roasty note without turning it into a stout
Got the ingredients from Brewmasters Warehouse yesterday and will be brewing one of these up this weekend using Pacman. This will be my third generation of Black Ale. In my opinion, it's been the best beer that I've brewed, but I can't help but tinker with the recipe each time.
 
if you can get your hands on sinmar I'd use that. It liquid carafa special. Even legal under the german purity laws. little bit darkens the beer w/o the roasty flavors
 
I am going to brew this up. It just looks like a ton of fun and I need to have this kind of beer in my repertoire(sp?). Accordingly I wrote up a 10gal batch recipe that is based off of Stone, just with ingredients that I have available

Black IPA

Estimated #s OG 1.090 / FG 1.018 / SRM 37 / IBU 113

30 lbs Pale Two-Row
3 lbs Victory
1.5 lbs Crystal 60L
1.5lbs Carafa III Special

5oz Magnum 60min (104 IBU)
2oz Centennial 5min (6 IBU)
2 oz Cascade 5 min (3 IBU)
2 oz each Simcoe and Amarillo Dry Hopped

US-05 yeast

I thank you all for showing me this idea because I was totally just thinking, WTF am I going to make next. This is it, along with an experimental brew with alternate bittering agents :) ;)
 
I had both the Stone and Iron Horse Black IPA's. Both were excellent. I also had a Black Pilsner by Scuttlebutt Brewing (Everett, WA) which was pretty awesome. The head brewer said that he used an brewing industry extract to get the color and flavor. I imagine he was talking about the liquid Carafa.
 
Yeah, I have heard that SinMar is the industry standard, but as a homebrewer that stuff is hard hard hard to get. I want to see what I can make with ingredients readily available and then should I ever come upon some I would go there.

Had the Stone brew tonight. Delicious, though not as hopped as I want to go for.

photo-739055.jpg
 
Stone's Sublimely Self-Righteous is the same as their XI Anniv for anyone wondering. Everyone liked it so much they made it a regular. Yep, not at all a hoppy stout. Hoppy stouts are very much stouts like Surly Darkness. The debittered carafa works wonders to give it just a little dark malt flavor to make you think, but keep it very much like an IPA.
 
This beer intrigues me. Its going to be bumped up to next on my list!

AnOldUr, have a recipe you would'nt mind sharing?
 
I'd love to obtain a bottle or few of that to try it out. Texas sucks for getting limited run stone's in. Their distributor page shows that the main distributor (Ben E Keith) only does the normal stuff.
 
This beer intrigues me. Its going to be bumped up to next on my list! AnOldUr, have a recipe you would'nt mind sharing?
This will be my third time brewing the Black Ale and there will be some adjustments. I want to try eliminating the crystal and use a little flaked barley. Also adding some Turbinado sugar. The hope is to dry it out a bit without taking too big a hit on body. On the hop side, I’m swapping Centennial for the Simcoe. I recently did an IPA with a combination of Amarillo and Centennial that was nice, so I wanted to try it here. Because of the 20 pound grain bill and my batch sparging, I set my efficiency at 65%. Will see how it goes, but that's the worse case.

5.5 gallons
1.090 OG
120 IBU
36 SRM

10 lbs US 2-Row (50%)
7 lbs Maris Otter (35%)
1 lb Flaked Barley (5%)
1 lb Carafa III (5%)
1 lb Tubinado Sugar (5%)

90 minute boil

2.0 oz Chinook FWH (70 IBU)
1.5 oz Amarillo 20 min (20 IBU)
1.5 oz Centennial 20 min (20 IBU)
.65 oz Amarillo 10 min (5 IBU)
.65 oz Centennial 10 min (5 IBU)
1.0 oz Amarillo Flame-out
1.0 oz Centennial Flame-out
1.5 oz Amarillo Dry Hop
1.5 oz Centennial Dry Hop

Chinook @ 11% AA
Amarillo @ 8% AA
Centennial @ 8% AA

2 qt starter of Pacman yeast

Well, today's brewday isn't going to happen. Partially my fault, partially the weather. No telling how warm the yeast got in the UPS truck this time of year. Even so, I should have gotten my starter going on Friday night when the supplies got here. Either that or used the 5th generation Pacman that I had, but I wanted to start with fresh yeast for this batch. Anyway, I waited until Saturday morning to make the starter. The smack pack didn’t swell over night, so I was a little worried. 24 hours later and I’m just now starting to get some krausen formation. Probably best to leave it on the stir plate until at least this evening and brew early next week. Oh well, I’ll have to spend the day drinking beer instead of making it.
:drunk:
 
In the last issue of BYO there was an article about "Fusion Beers". One of the things the author mentions is adding dark malts during the sparge to minimize the roast/burnt flavor impacts but still get the dark/black color you're looking for.
 
I was tossing around the idea of a Black IPA a month ago, but I sort of moved on to more traditional beers. But an awesome Black IPA made by Odells changed my mind. And this thread has cemented it. So, how about this recipe that I just whipped up.

11Lb 2 row
8oz 60L Crystal
8oz Carafa III
4oz Chocolate Malt

1oz Simcoe 60 min
.5oz Amarillo 30 min
.5oz cascade 15 min
.5oz Amarillo 10 min
.5oz cascade 5 min
1oz Amarillo dry hop
1oz Cascade dry hop

Nottingham dry yeast.

What do you think. This is a brew that won't happen til mid-late July.
 
I like that idea of adding the dark malts later in the mash. Maybe around say 45 minutes of a 60 minute mash intead of at the beginning. Do you guys/gals think it will get enough color in 15 minutes?
 
In Oregon here they're trying to throw down and claim Black IPA as "Cascadian Dark Ale". I was just at the north american organic brewers festival and had this beer and it was really enjoyable. Not lot a hoppy stout, more like a slightly roasty ipa. Here is a quote from the festival blog that has some ingredient tips: Blog - North American Organic Brewers Festival » Blog Archive » Hopworks Secession Cascadian Dark Ale

North American Organic Brewers Festival organizers joined forces with Hopworks Urban Brewery to brew a revolutionary Cascadian Dark Ale, dubbed Secession, which will debut at the NAOBF June 26-28th in Portland’s Overlook Park.

Secession is characterized by an alliance of Northwest hop flavors as powerful as Cascadia’s coniferous forests, and roasty malts as black as the rubber boots Cascadians don from September to June, (and brewers wear year round).

Secession is brewed in the emerging Cascadian Dark Ale style, often mistakenly called Black IPA. Pioneered by brewers in Newport, Oregon and Victoria, BC the style has been gaining traction across Cascadia and further afield. NAOBF organizers Abram Goldman-Armstrong, a homebrewer since 1995, and Izaak Butler who has helped him brew many 10-gallon batches of CDA, teamed up with Hopworks Brewmaster Christian Ettinger and Assistant Brewmaster Ben Love to brew 20 barrels of Secession on Hopworks’ biodiesel-fueled brewkettle. Secession is a classic example of this truly indigenous Cascadian beer style, bountifully hopped with Nugget, Magnum, Centennial, Atahnum, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops from first wort to the fermentor. Its 70 units of bitterness, are offset by a roasty character from organic chocolate and Carafa malts, with a hint of caramel lurking in the forest of hop flavors.
 
mkorpal, I wouldn't use any chocolate malt in this beer. Not claiming to be an expert since I haven't brewed one. It seems like the other recipes are basically IPA's or IIPA's except for the CarafaIII or debittered black malt. I think chocolate would add flavor you are looking to avoid.
 
I like that idea of adding the dark malts later in the mash. Maybe around say 45 minutes of a 60 minute mash intead of at the beginning. Do you guys/gals think it will get enough color in 15 minutes?

add about 1.5# of dehusked carafa to the mash right before you sparge. Vorlaugh and then sparge and you should be dark enough. I used .75# and it wasnt enough but keep in mind that your not adding flavor- just color. You can also pick up some sinmar extract from northern brewer which will do much the same thing however it is cheaper to cap the mash with grains
 
I have been wanting to do a black IPA for a year now. I think it's time to get off my butt and do something up.

I have also wanted to do a black heff just for the hell of it. :D
 
Flying Dog Gonzo is a super hoppy porter - I've liked it a lot when I had it. I've even had it on cask once.
 
Ok, I have a question about this style as well. I have worked up a partial extract recipe from some other threads on the forum and I had some questions about how people would execute these. Here's my recipe:

5 gallon batch

9 lb Light DME
.5 lb Crystal 60
.5 lb Carafa III (de-husked)
1 oz. Chinook - 60 min.
1 oz. Simcoe - 10 min.
1 oz. Amarillo - 10 min.
1 oz. each Simcoe and Amarillo - Dry Hop in secondary
Wyeast 1056 or US-05 (haven't decided on the yeast yet)

My main question is how to work the grains in. There is only one pound of grain, so I don't imagine it will require a full mash. Should I just steep them? Will the steeping temp make a difference? Should I do a partial mash with one pound of grain and a couple gallons of water, then add it to my extract mix before the boil? I'm planning to do a full boil with this. Any help is appreciated.
 
Ok, I have a question about this style as well. I have worked up a partial extract recipe from some other threads on the forum and I had some questions about how people would execute these. Here's my recipe:

5 gallon batch

9 lb Light DME
.5 lb Crystal 60
.5 lb Carafa III (de-husked)
1 oz. Chinook - 60 min.
1 oz. Simcoe - 10 min.
1 oz. Amarillo - 10 min.
1 oz. each Simcoe and Amarillo - Dry Hop in secondary
Wyeast 1056 or US-05 (haven't decided on the yeast yet)

My main question is how to work the grains in. There is only one pound of grain, so I don't imagine it will require a full mash. Should I just steep them? Will the steeping temp make a difference? Should I do a partial mash with one pound of grain and a couple gallons of water, then add it to my extract mix before the boil? I'm planning to do a full boil with this. Any help is appreciated.

The Crystal and Carafa will only need to be steeped to get what you want out of them.
 
Should I just steep them at flame out until I have the color I want, or should they be steeped at a certain temperature or separate from the main boil altogether. This is my first batch and I just want to make sure it's right.
 
What I always did was to steep them in my water at 160* for 15 minutes before I started the boil. Removed the grain sac (don't squeeze but let drain) then started the boil and continue as normal.
 
I have a Stone XI that will come off its dry hops (1.5 oz simco and amarillo) in a day or so. Taste is fantastic, and I used Carafa III rather than black patent to get the color if anyone was curious. It seems to lend a much more subtle roast character
 
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