Cascadian Dark Ale Recipe

I've been drinking Hopworks secession black ipa (cascadian dark ale) lately and really like it, so last night I started working on ideas for a recipe. I'm not too familiar with using the dark roasts, so I was looking for some feedback...

After searching online, I found that they used choc malt and carafa malt in the recipe. I think caramel malt was also mentioned. They seem to be mostly for color, as the beer's body is pretty light and there is not much roast character to the beer... It weighs in at 1.061 and 70 IBU.

Here's what I'm leaning toward:
12 gallons (13 gallon boil volume)
79% 20# American 2 row
7.9% 2# American Chocolate
7.9% 2# German Carafa II
3.9% 1# American Crystal 60L
1.3% .33# American Roasted Barley

For my system, this should give me an og of 1.060 with and SRM of 42... Nice and dark. Forty SRM seems to be what the style (unofficial) calls for.

I was planning on mashing at 149 or 150 to get a more fermentable wort.

I'm wondering about the chocolate and carafa additions. The carafa is debittered, so I wouldn't think it would be problematic... I don't this to be a roasty malty beer. I'm looking for something light with just a hint of roast character but deep color (that's the problem...)

I'm wanting to try this styel too. I had Widmeir Brothers Pitch Black IPA...Great stuff. I think it's something like 66 OG 60 IBU.

Anyway, from looking at their website and talking to some other folks. I think you need to lower your chocolate and carafa II. Also, drop the Roasted Barley even a little bit goes a long way I think.

Carafa II debitterd as I gather will still give a slight roast flavor just not much. I would suggest 2% Carafa / 1% chocolate maybe. But then I'm not sure if you'll get enough color. also, up the crystal to maybe 8% of the bill. I like to layer the crystal malts...try 6% 120L / 2% 40L. Basically, I've heard the dark malts are there only to derive color to the beer.

I would really like to get some other people to weigh in on this.

Thanks for your advice! I'll mess around with the recipe using your advice and see what I get. I'm a little afraid of using too much crystal... I like the pitch black ipa too, but it is maltier than what I'm going for, which is inspired by the secession black ipa. It's not as malty but has a lot of fresh hop flavor.

While I have not tried this style or that particular beer, I did recently brew a Pale Ale with a 1% Roasted Barley addition, and the roasty flavor was soft but noticable. If you are not into roasty ... I might skip that one.. (granted, in a pale ale, it was easy to pickup on the roasty .. in your grist, it might blend very well inbetween the chocolate & carafa)

Last month, I brewed an Amber Ale with 1% Carafa II, and that tasted much smoother.. not roasty... just some toasty sweetness.

Chocolate malt is pretty sweet to me. I've used 4% in a nice brown ale, and seen 6% used in porters and such.

So, perhaps you might consider:

Amount Item Type % or IBU
22.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 84.62 %
2.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 7.69 %
1.00 lb Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 3.85 %
1.00 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 3.85 %

Est Original Gravity: 1.056 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.014
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.37 %
Est Color: 29.4 SRM

What does your hop profile look like?
--LexusChris

LexusChris said:

Chocolate malt is pretty sweet to me. I've used 4% in a nice brown ale, and seen 6% used in porters and such.
--LexusChris

Click to expand...

Chocolate malt is not sweet at all, sorry. It's a sort of roasted malt and adds no sweetness to beer. You might have been using it in conjunction with caramel/crystal and confusing which grain is adding what attribute. You can get all sorts of nutty, toasty flavors from it but sweetness is not one of them.

MattHollingsworth said:

Chocolate malt is not sweet at all, sorry. It's a sort of roasted malt and adds no sweetness to beer. You might have been using it in conjunction with caramel/crystal and confusing which grain is adding what attribute. You can get all sorts of nutty, toasty flavors from it but sweetness is not one of them.

Click to expand...

I concur. There is no sweetness from chocolate malt, and it really tastes nothing like chocolate either.

Taste your grains people!

MattHollingsworth said:

Chocolate malt is not sweet at all, sorry. It's a sort of roasted malt and adds no sweetness to beer. ... You can get all sorts of nutty, toasty flavors from it but sweetness is not one of them.

Click to expand...

Matt is correct. I misspoke. My palate & vocabulary gets messed up on those flavors quite a bit.

I have a lot of respect for Matt's brewing experience & recipes! It would be great if he could give us a take on this grain bill...

Thanks all!
--LexusChris

LexusChris said:

Matt is correct. I misspoke. My palate & vocabulary gets messed up on those flavors quite a bit.

I have a lot of respect for Matt's brewing experience & recipes! It would be great if he could give us a take on this grain bill...

Thanks all!
--LexusChris

Click to expand...

I actually like what you did, personally. To me, 16% chocolate-like malt, which is what the original recipe amounts to, is a helluva lot. I'd cut that in half.

And thanks for the kind words.

Thanks again for all the input... Thanks for the grainbill LexusChris! It looks good -- I might lean towards what you've done.

I thought someone asked to see the hop schedule I was thinking of using, although I don't see the post anywhere so may be I imagined it, but I'll include it anyway...

The hopworks version uses nugget and magnum for bittering and centennial, atahnum, simcoe and amarillo for the finishing hops... I am not planning on throwing that many different hops in to my boil, but in trying to get a beer with a lot of fresh hop flavor and some aroma, I was thinking of doing a lot of late boil additions. So:
2 oz Nugget 60min
2 oz Cascade 30min
2 oz Amarillo 10min
2 oz Cascade 10min
2 oz Amarillo 5min
That gives me a total of 67 IBU or so with a gravity of 1.060. I personally like amarillo hops a lot and I have a bunch of cascades that I picked, dried and stored frozen in canning jars. I'm open to suggestions here, too, this is just what came to me...

By the way, if anyone is interested, here is an article about the guy lobbying hard to add cascadian dark ales to recognized by the American Homebrewer's Association. It outlines the style parameters he envisions.
http://brewpublic.com/places-to-drink-beer/cascadian-dark-ales/

When I think of Cascadian Dark Ales, I think of an IPA that is black in color and not flavor. Otherwise you start getting into the category of really hoppy American Stout and that isn't what you are looking for. Not to post whore or steal a thread, but the Stone Anniversary XI thread gave out a really good recipe that I taylored to my personal preference and came up with a recipe that I am just about to rebrew. It is all about the flavor profile really screaming IPA if you were going to taste it blind and then you open your eyes and the darned thing is black!

I hope that this helps, but good luck and keep us informed.

PS...sorry no link to the Stone recipe, just search and you will get it. Go for the one that says what I typed above and not anything more. It is like a thirty page thread

This is an interesting idea:
Some brewers prefer to cold steep the dark grains to achieve a very dark beer without the tannin contribution of adding the grains to the mash. The use of Sinnamar to enhance color is common.
From here: http://brewpublic.com/places-to-drink-beer/cascadian-dark-ales/

Has anyone tried this? Do you think you just crush the dark grains and steep them in a quart or two of water? I wonder for how long...

Thanks for the recipe and the thread to search for, Matt! Your experience with trying to subdue the coffee-like roast flavor is helpful. I might try to dry hop for a week, too.

Sinmar is a common probrewer thing, but we don't have access to it in the same way. It costs a pretty penny more for us. Honestly though, if you are buying an oz of hops for three bucks, then it isn't really that expensive. My advice is to really do some more research and figure out a good base recipe that you can try out. Go from there. I made a five gallon batch my first time and it was gone so quickly that I made a ten gallon batch the next month! It was gone within another six weeks! When it is good it is good. Then I had a couple of really terrible versions that threw me off, so there are ways to mess it up royally.

Something else I did was read about the Stone beer here, went out and bought the Sublimely Self Righteous, realized that I wanted it a bit dryer and formatted my recipe to suit it that way.

I just made an experimental batch similar to a CDA, or close to the style (see my sig for the extract recipe, 3-C).

If I do it again, I will drop the roasted. It gave it a really off taste. Either that or drop the hops quite a bit, but then it's not really the style anymore is it?

The roasted is completely out of place in a beer like this for flavor. It needs only be there for color and an easy way to get color without too much flavor is to do the french press method (or soak in a bowl method). Crush your grain for more color and flavor, or just throw it in whole for less extraction. Put it into some 150-160* water and let it steep until you get all of the color out of it. I found that 15minutes is about all it needs for the color extraction. Keep in mind that you are coloring up a lot more liquid than you steeped in. This way you can make a clear IPA, sparge off into your boil kettle and then just like hopping, add this liquid to give your beer the Dark Color!!! Bwahahahaha :rockin:


PS...taste the steeping liquid to make sure it is up to your specs. If it isn't dark enough or too roasty then adjust accordingly. I like to test it in a clear wine glass and swirl just a half oz to find out just how much color it really has. Stouts this way can appear "light" even.

the stone XI beer is something like 95% 2 row, 5% C60 and 5% carafaIII (debittered).

i think it's bittered with chinook and finished with simcoe and amarillo. it's a really good beer.
around 100IBU and i think OG is around 1.080

I was under the impression that Cascadian Dark Ale was still in it's infancy as a style and as such how can you say that it should not have any roasted flavor? I have tried every Cascadian Dark / IBA that I can find and about half have had a noticeable roasted note. Personally that is what I love about it, and developed my recipe to met that goal. To me if it is just color - it is more of a gimick - just my opinion.

Again this is what I love about brewing - to each their own and enjoy your beer.

Cheers

You know you guys go really forgo all this crap and either a) use sinmar b) realize that coloring a beer just for color's sake is retarded or c) put black food coloring in your IPA.

What's next turning every light colored beer dark and renaming it? I mean come on.

OTOH, the OP's recipe is basically an American Stout, that's a bit more hoppy than usual.

People get up in a huff about calling it an Black IPA. So iif you think about it as a Black IPA then yes, it is just a black version of an IPA. It isn't about the roast coming out to the forfront. Maybe in the background, but it is still an IPA. IPA's can have malty, caramel, fig, yada yada yada. This is just another version that is black in color.

It is like English IPA and American IPA. Is one just more hoppy? Then we should just make all beers more hoppy and call them "American"...wait a sec.

Course this is all just my thoughts. To each their own.

BillyBeer said:

I was under the impression that Cascadian Dark Ale was still in it's infancy as a style and as such how can you say that it should not have any roasted flavor? I have tried every Cascadian Dark / IBA that I can find and about half have had a noticeable roasted note. Personally that is what I love about it, and developed my recipe to met that goal. To me if it is just color - it is more of a gimick - just my opinion.

Again this is what I love about brewing - to each their own and enjoy your beer.

Cheers

Click to expand...

That is exactly what is so great about brewing your own beer -- you can take a given style or beer that you've tried somewhere and tweek it to suit your own palate.

I don't have anything against roast flavor in itself, it's just not what I'm trying to achieve with this recipe at this time. I'm not personally too concerned about style guidelines when brewing beers; I like to keep the recipes simple and I'm not into adding dandelion roots and hibiscus flowers, but otherwise, what's the point of being confined by tradition if the goal is to make good beer, not beer that fits neatly into categories.

The reason I'm not into accentuating the roast flavor in this recipe is that it was very subtle in Hopworks Secession CDA that I've been drinking and that is the beer that got me started trying to formulate this recipe.

The reason that beers like this are being toted as a Cascadian Dark Ale as opposed to a black ipa is to highlight the role of the pacific northwest in the beer scene and to pay homage to its hops, which supply the rest of the country with lupulin. The reasons for naming this style cda are layed out much more eloquently in this article:
http://brewpublic.com/places-to-drink-beer/cascadian-dark-ales/

z987k said:

You know you guys go really forgo all this crap and either a) use sinmar b) realize that coloring a beer just for color's sake is retarded or c) put black food coloring in your IPA.

What's next turning every light colored beer dark and renaming it? I mean come on.

OTOH, the OP's recipe is basically an American Stout, that's a bit more hoppy than usual.

Click to expand...

Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays...

OMG IS HE DRINKING MILLER!?

I went out on a limb and decided to email Abram Goldman-Armstrong, the designer of the Hopworks recipe and the person really pushing for this style to be accepted, asking him to critique the recipe I had put together. Here is the recipe I submitted:

12 Gallon Batch
13 Gallon Boil Volume

83% 22# American Two Row
5.7% 1.5# Crystal 60
5.7% 1.5# German Carafa Special
1% .25# Roasted Barley
3.8% 1# Chocolate Malt
OG 1.058 (I can nudge this up to 1.061...)
SRM 39

To my utter surprise he wrote back and even went so far as to give me the percentages of dark malts they used in the Hopworks batch. Here is his reply:

Hi Jeff- Glad you like the beer, I am quite fond of the style myself. Your recipe looks good, though a little heavy on the dark grains. I generally use 1/2 pound each of chocolate, Carafa and Roast barley in a 10 gallon batch. With your recipe you might want to use only a pound of Carafa, and keep the other two where they are. The initial batch we did at Hopworks used 1% Carafa, and 2% chocolate malt, but was a little light in color. They now are using Breiss organic black malt in place of the Carafa, and I believe the total dark malts are about 4%.
When brewing CDAs I generally shoot for a fairly low mash temp 150-151F, to insure a light body.
It looks like you are on the right track, happy brewing.

It is unbelievably cool that this guy would be so helpful. :rockin: Anyway, I'm sharing this here for anyone thinking of trying out something similar.

ElDuderino said:

It is unbelievably cool that this guy would be so helpful. :rockin: Anyway, I'm sharing this here for anyone thinking of trying out something similar.

Click to expand...

Surprised you haven't met him. He and I were in the Oregon Brew Crew together ten years ago. My guess is he's still in the Brew Crew. And you're in Portland, so you should be too! He's a good guy. There are also a lot of other talented brewers who go to the Brew Crew meetings, pro and amateur (or at least did when I was there). Noel Blake, Alan Sprints, Rob Widmer and Fred Eckhardt being a few that immediately come to mind. It's worth going to a meeting if you haven't been.

Yeah, I've wanted to get involved with the brew crew for a while... It seems like a great group. I started brewing after my wife and I had a baby and it's affected how often I leave the house at night, although my son's getting older so that's starting to change a little.

On a side note, I've been wanting to ask where you get grain, hops and supplies in Croatia? Is there any kind of homebrewing thing going on there?

Brewing a Kentuckian Dark Ale myself this weekend.

ElDuderino said:

Yeah, I've wanted to get involved with the brew crew for a while... It seems like a great group. I started brewing after my wife and I had a baby and it's affected how often I leave the house at night, although my son's getting older so that's starting to change a little.

On a side note, I've been wanting to ask where you get grain, hops and supplies in Croatia? Is there any kind of homebrewing thing going on there?

Click to expand...

Brew Crew meetings are only once a month though. So, no big commitment!

There's a little homebrew scene I'm starting to get involved in here but it seems like most folks don't know the basics. We'll see though. I haven't tasted anyone's beer yet. For me, I still drive to Slovenija to get grain and get most other stuff through the mail.

z987k said:

You know you guys go really forgo all this crap and either a) use sinmar b) realize that coloring a beer just for color's sake is retarded or c) put black food coloring in your IPA.

What's next turning every light colored beer dark and renaming it? I mean come on.

Click to expand...

Have any of you guys even tried these beers? I don't know which beers you have been sampling, but Stone's Sublimely Self Righteous beer is no ordinary IPA with black color. The dark malts add unbelievable characteristics to a Hoppy beer. It might be best to leave the term IPA out of the name just because it seems to confuse people.

I can even taste the dark malts in the lesser Widmer W'10 Pitch Black IPA.


I will taste test these with an IPA any day of the week.

z987k,

Check out this link as well from david_42:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/proposed-style-guidelines-cascadian-dark-ale-161579/


Note the 'Taste' and 'Mouthfeel' Characteristics. It's not a normal IPA with just black color.

Haputanlas said:

z987k,

Check out this link as well from david_42:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/proposed-style-guidelines-cascadian-dark-ale-161579/


Note the 'Taste' and 'Mouthfeel' Characteristics. It's not a normal IPA with just black color.

Click to expand...

yeah I read that crap. It's category 23 people.

z987k said:

yeah I read that crap. It's category 23 people.

Click to expand...

Jeez man, so you don't like the style, big deal. You didn't answer if you'd ever even drank one, but if you had, you'd realize the beer is different than a "hoppy stout" or a "food-colored IPA." It's somewhere in between, and many of us like it.

If you don't like it, fine, but there's no need to hijack the OP's recipe thread with angry rants just because he does.

Thanks for your level headed response, damdaman. I didn't start this thread to debate whether this beer deserves it's own category or whether it's just a hoppy stout/porter or whether it's just a dark ipa or whether it even deserves to exist. I don't disagree that there can be, should be or is often a pronounced roast character in the beers people have tried in this style. I had a particular beer made by a local brewery here that I really liked and would like to make. It did not have as much roast and malt character as the Widmere black ipa or the dogzilla I've had, not that I have anything against those beers. I appreciate all the responses that have guided me closer to my goal. Many of the others, while often passionate, weren't really helpful; then again, I can't say they weren't entertaining to read.

I too love the CDA and want to try my hand at making some. The brew scene in Portland is great because most of the big brewers are or were home brewers. Most are very willing to help us little guys.

Here's some information to help craft your own version of our CDA.

Malt Bill:
Base Malt 85-90%
Caramel Malt 1-5%
Black or Carafa Malt 1-5%
Chocolate 1-5%

Hop Bill:
Bitter with Nugget or Magnum
Use Simcoe, Amarillo, Cascade for late adds and dry hopping

OG: 15 Plato/SG: 1.062
6.5% ABV
70 IBU

You can add the black malt at lauter if you want to avoid too much of an
acrid element from the black malt...Sinamar (Black malt liquid color form
Weyermann is an option for coloring as well).

Happy Brewing!

In regards to the use of grains like the carafa II or III or black patent or whatever you pick, you need the color not the flavor. I have tried adding it to the mash for only the last five minutes. This would have been great if I had not also gotten a stuck sparge and ended up with the malt sitting in there for another 45 minutes. The end result was to much of a roasted flavor for what I was shooting for in an IPA. Next time I would look at putting just my darkening malt in a muslin bag so I could completely remove it from the mash during the sparge.

Thought i would share the final version I am going to try on Monday

9.65 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
0.56 lbs. Carafa Special I Germany
0.56 lbs. Chocolate Wheat Malt
0.56 lbs. Carmel Malt 1

Hops
0.90 oz. Magnum 60 min
0.30 oz. Amarillo Gold 10 min
0.30 oz. Cascade 10 min
0.30 oz. Simcoe 10 min
0.30 oz. Amarillo Gold 5 min
0.30 oz. Cascade 5 min
0.30 oz. Simcoe 5 min
0.25 oz. Amarillo Gold 0 min
0.25 oz. Cascade 0 min
0.25 oz. Simcoe 0 min

Mash 152
Wyeast 1028

How did it turn out?