Black IPA Recipe Critique - Am I Going Overboard?

First time developing my own Black IPA recipe, looking for guidance from others.

Black Hole Sun - Black IPA

8 lbs 2 row
3 lbs MO
1 lbs Crystal 10
1 lbs Dextrose
.75 lbs Black Patent
.5 lbs Chocolate malt
.5 lbs Debittered Carafa III

Cold steep the dark malts in 1 gallon of water the night before brewing, or a full day before if possible. Strain the grain out, refrigerate.
60 minute mash @ 152, mashout @ 170
Start boil, get past hot break
1 oz Centennial @ 75 min
1 oz Chinook @ 60 min
1 oz Chinook @ 45 min
.5 oz Amarillo @ 15 min
Dextrose @ 15 min
.5 oz Cascade @ 10 min
.5 oz Amarillo @ 5 min
.5 oz Cascade @ flameout
Dark grain tea @ flameout
2 packets US-05 yeast

14 days primary
7 days in secondary with 1 oz Amarillo dry hop
7 days in secondary with 1 oz Cascade dry hop (week after Amarillo)

OG 1.077-1.080
SRM 48
IBU ~120

However, I only used debittered Carafa 3 in the hot mash for 60 minutes and the amount of color and flavor that came out was amazing. I think the roast flavor is obviously present but sits right underneath the hops.

I assume the cold steeping is similar to cold pressed coffee, right? You'd still get a lot of flavor and color but without the tannic/bitter agents of the roasted malts?
I think the recipe looks great, maybe remove the 1oz at 60 or lower the amount you use to bring the IBU's down a little?

I'm not sure of my IBU's but I think I remember calculating out at 80.. around there. These beers are hard to balance. I've had some that were over the top roasty and over the top bitter and they were gross. Then some that were just hoppy bitter and black in color with no roast profile at all.


I used Northern Brewer(9.3AA) at 60m and added my next hop, Amarillo(9AA) at 25m. OG was 1.075.

Id personally scale back the dark malts, and I don't care for the taste of chocolate malt in a black IPA, but that's just my opinion. I'm drinking a pint of mine right now and it had 1.25 lbs of carafa II ( which equated to 7.4% of the grain bill) as the only dark grain and I feel its too roasty. Next time I brew this beer Ill be dropping that back to 1 lb. Also to me this style needs to be really well attenuated, any residual sweetness just doesn't seem to play well with the dark malts and the hops.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Marshal - what was your OG and yeast? Part of the reason I'm adding the dextrose is to contribute to a drier profile.

I believe my og was around 1.068-1.070 and I used wlp 007 the dry english ale strain, next time Ill try either 001 or the new san diego strain 090. Part of my recipe included sugar although I cant remember how much, I want to say it was around a pound for a 6 gallon batch.

Turmoil Cascadian Dark Ale clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.070 FG = 1.010
IBU = 94 SRM = 35 ABV = 7.9%

Ingredients
11.5 lbs. (5.2 kg) 2-row pale malt
18 oz. (0.51 kg) Weyermann Carafa® II malt (450 °L)
18 oz. (0.51 kg) Munich malt
8.0 oz. (0.23 kg) crystal malt (40 °L)
12 oz. (0.34 kg) wheat malt
3.0 AAU Columbus hops (first wort hops) (0.2 oz./5.7 g of 15% alpha acid)
1.3 AAU Simcoe hops (first wort hops) (0.1 oz./2.8 g of 12.8% alpha acid)
7.0 AAU Magnum hops (60 mins) (0.5 oz /14 g of 14% alpha acid)
6.4 AAU Simcoe hops (60 mins) (0.5 oz /14 g of 12.8% alpha acid)
4.0 AAU Amarillo hops (30 mins) (0.4 oz /11 g of 10% alpha acid)
2.6 AAU Cascade hops (15 mins) (0.5 oz /14 g of 5.25% alpha acid)
2.6 AAU Cascade hops (2 mins) (0.5 oz /14 g of 5.25% alpha acid)
3.9 AAU Cascade hops (0 mins) (0.75 oz /21 g of 5.25% alpha acid)
1.25 oz. (35 g) Amarillo hops (dry hops)
½ tsp. yeast nutrient (15 mins)
½ tsp. Irish moss (30 mins)
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) or Fermentis US-05 yeast
0.75 cup (150 g) corn sugar (for priming)

The above is the recipe for Barley Browns Turmoil CDA, which is the recipe I used. I had to add the sugar along with some DME to bring my pre boil gravity up due to poor efficiency. I also used my own hopping schedule, but had similar BU's.

http://***********/component/resource/article/2072-birth-of-a-new-style-cascadian-dark-ale
Good article on the style

Thanks Marshal, appreciatre your feedback and the link. Going to be making some good changes to this...

You don't have to cold steep the debittered carafa if you dont' want to.

i think your hop selection looks awesome, might want to double the amounts of the dry hops would be the only change i would suggest.

Okay, after reading further, here's what I'm now thinking about:

Black Hole Sun - Black IPA

6 lbs 2 row
3 lbs MO
1 lbs Crystal 40
1 lbs Dextrose
1 lbs Debittered Carafa III
.25 lbs Pale Chocolate Malt
.13 lbs Red Wheat

Cold steep the dark malts in 1 gallon of water the night before brewing, or a full day before if possible. Strain the grain out, refrigerate.
60 minute mash @ 152, mashout @ 170
Start boil, get past hot break
.5 oz Centennial @ 75 min
.5 oz Chinook @ 20 min
.5 oz Amarillo @ 20 min
.5 oz Cascade @ 20 min
Dextrose @ 15 min
.5 oz Chinook @ 5 min
.5 oz Amarillo @ 5 min
.5 oz Cascade @ 5 min
Dark grain tea @ flameout
.5 oz Amarillo @ flameout
.5 oz Cascade @ flameout
2 packets US-05 yeast

14 days primary
7 days in secondary with 1 oz Amarillo dry hop
7 days in secondary with 1 oz Cascade dry hop (week after Amarillo)

OG 1.067
FG 1.017
ABV 6.8%
SRM 39
IBU ~60

alexdagrate said:

You don't have to cold steep the debittered carafa if you dont' want to.

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I'm trying to force myself into the habit of doing cold steep of dark grains every time. What I'll end up doing is making the tea, and experimenting with how much I add in future batches. This provides better flavor control, something I want to focus on.

This thread is interesting to me since my next beer is one of these ales.

What yeast is traditional for a Black IPA/Cascadian Dark Ale? I have a choice between WLP001 and WLP028. Any preference?

I see reference here to skipping the mid boil additions and doing at 60 and flameout. Is there really a difference between 60, 30 and 15? I just did a Sculpin IPA clone and there were additions every 15 min. I have the sense that most of those simply bittered. I would like to increase the flavor. I plan on 2 oz each of Amarillo and Centenial as dry hop and my boil additions are giving me about 100 IBU. What is a reasonable amount of Amarillo, Cascade or Centennial to use at flameout?

Thanks and sorry for the hijack.

I'm trying to understand why you would add dextrose. I think you should drop that. With a lbs of crystal and a lbs of dextrose I think you're looking at a seriously overweight FG for an IPA. Many IPAs don't even have any crystal-- just pale. I don't think I've ever seen an IPA with dextrose in it. Just seems to run counter to the idea of a well-attenuated, hoppy beer.

I'd root for simplicity. Stone Sublimely Self Righteous is nothing but pale, crystal 60, and carafa III spezial.

Dextrose will completely ferment out, solely being used to increase alcohol content.

Whoops, my bad. For some reason instead of dextrose I was thinking of malto-dextrine, which wouldn't make sense. Dextrose totally makes sense for drying it out. Sorry about the confusion.

Brewitt said:

This thread is interesting to me since my next beer is one of these ales.

What yeast is traditional for a Black IPA/Cascadian Dark Ale? I have a choice between WLP001 and WLP028. Any preference?

I see reference here to skipping the mid boil additions and doing at 60 and flameout. Is there really a difference between 60, 30 and 15? I just did a Sculpin IPA clone and there were additions every 15 min. I have the sense that most of those simply bittered. I would like to increase the flavor. I plan on 2 oz each of Amarillo and Centenial as dry hop and my boil additions are giving me about 100 IBU. What is a reasonable amount of Amarillo, Cascade or Centennial to use at flameout?

Thanks and sorry for the hijack.

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Any American yeast will do that you can get good attenuation out of. As for the hop addition question, I would avoid doing just 60 min and flameout additions. I did that in a beer and the hop transition in the beer from the 60min hops to the flameout/dry hop flavors was very choppy. This next time I added a small amount (~0.5 oz) at 30 min to hopefully bridge the gap a little better. I'm bottling that one next week, so we'll see if my theory was correct.

For your flameout I would think that 2-4 oz's would be a good place to start, but remember you'll get similar characteristics (but not identical) from the dry hops. I would think that a combined 5 oz or so between the flameout/dry hop will get you the massive hop flavor/aroma that are characteristic of these dark IPAs. Then a small middle addition (between 20-40 minutes) then a good bittering charge would round out the rest of the beer.

Made this today, will be posting updates here. OG came in a bit higher than expected, but I think attenuation will actually be higher than expected in the recipe above, so it should come out in the same neighborhood.

This ended up sitting on its yeast cake for an extended time. I dry hopped with an ounce of citra for two weeks, and pulled the hops today. Both the taste and aroma were awesome. It's keg carbing right now, although all three of my taps are near full kegs right now, so it may not make it onto tap for a month or so.

BTW, even though it did come out a couple points higher in OG, the FG was one point lower. Looking at an ABV of ~7%, which is my sweet spot for beers.

What's the cold steep for?

rockgardenlove said:

What's the cold steep for?

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Read about it in Gordon Strong's book, it helps ensure that bitterness from the dark grains isn't present in the final product.