Specialty IPA: Black IPA Darth Vader - Black IPA

GeorgiaMead said:

I'm wondering how long should this stay in primary? Beersmith says 4 days then transfer to secondary for 10 days then bottle... And seasoned brewers have conflicting views cause I'm up for the task

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I did 10 days primary.... 7 days secondary no dry hops.... Then 7 days with dry hops

Worked for me... If you dry hop for over 10 days you are pushing the limit and it could partake some vegetable flavors

Ok thank y'all fermentation has slowed down to very little airlock activity, so I'm thinking ten days will be good and then 2 weeks in secondary and 5 days of dry hops

No need to transfer to secondary. Just dry hop right in the primary. Less chance for infection/oxidation and less cleaning to do!

I do wines meads an ciders. So infection/ oxidation I am not worried I am very efficient at transferring to secondary and so forth

I can't wait to make this beer I try to brew 2 gallon batch extract of Darth Vader brew happy happy

Going to make this today.

Sent a partial recipe to the LHBS (sans base malt and hops). Didn't include the recipe name or anything else except the word "CDA". Got the bag back with "Should Have Worn a Rubber CDA" Sharpied into the side. Clearly, somebody recognized your recipe!

Problem is, I didn't plug it into BeerSmith before sending off the recipe, so I got the exact amount of specialty malt you specified here. Looks like you're building off 65% mash eff at 1.066, but I'm getting 78-80% at in the 1.060's and below. I'm going to keep it at the recipe as listed, but fully expecting this to hit 1.077 (75%) - 1.082 (80%) on my rig. If I were to dial it back to 1.066, it'd probably be far too malty.

It'll be a doozie at 7.6% - 8.1% ABV. Can't wait.


UPDATE: Scratch all the high-grav mess above. I realized that the LHBS gave me a bag of evenly-mixed grains at exactly 5#. Scaling the recipe in BeerSmith to 80% and 1.066, I hit:

1# 9.6 oz Carafa III
1# 9.6 oz Crystal 15
12.8 oz Special Roast
--- Total 4#

Scooped off exactly 1# of the mixture and will be (hopefully) putting it towards my re-brew of this.

Also, I'm out of US-05. Had hoped to brew this two weeks from now, after an LHBS run, but all of my other planned recipes take US-05 as well. Guess I'll be using Nottingham instead, as I have 9 packets on-hand.

Perhaps you've already done it and in that case you can ignore this, but getting completely homogeneous mixtures of solid particles isn't the easiest thing, so I wouldn't assume that taking off 20% of it will still result in what you expect. Of course brewing isn't an exact science, so it will probably be fine, but just wanted to let you know.

Couldn't you have just increased the batch size? Of course there are reasons why you may not have wanted to that too.

mtnagel said:

Perhaps you've already done it and in that case you can ignore this, but getting completely homogeneous mixtures of solid particles isn't the easiest thing, so I wouldn't assume that taking off 20% of it will still result in what you expect. Of course brewing isn't an exact science, so it will probably be fine, but just wanted to let you know.

Couldn't you have just increased the batch size? Of course there are reasons why you may not have wanted to that too.

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Already bringing to boil, so indeed too late, but... yes and no on the increasing batch size.

Boiling down to 10.5 gallons. Moved it up to a 90 minute boil, so volume out of the tun was closer to 13.6 gallons.

My tun can certainly deal with 15 gallon batches up to about 1.075, but a 20% larger batch probably wouldn't have fit in the keggle for a 90 minute boil (16.32 gal), and it would have been very tight at 60 minute even (15.36 gal).

Plus, my fermentation chamber only has room for 20 gallons (4 buckets), and I put 10 gallons of a scotch heavy in there yesterday.

Put this on my list

First tasting the from the kettle..

Definitely roasty. Not acrid like I expected.

Felt it needed something to provide a light, fresh note to keep it on the IPA side and away from Porters. Trying to stay away from this one having an overpowering Ruination hoppiness, and more of a Two Hearted floral hoppiness to balance the backbone.

Switched out the flameout 2oz of Cascade for 0.2oz Cascade and 1.8oz Centennial.

thadius856 said:

Already bringing to boil, so indeed too late, but... yes and no on the increasing batch size.

Boiling down to 10.5 gallons. Moved it up to a 90 minute boil, so volume out of the tun was closer to 13.6 gallons.

My tun can certainly deal with 15 gallon batches up to about 1.075, but a 20% larger batch probably wouldn't have fit in the keggle for a 90 minute boil (16.32 gal), and it would have been very tight at 60 minute even (15.36 gal).

Plus, my fermentation chamber only has room for 20 gallons (4 buckets), and I put 10 gallons of a scotch heavy in there yesterday.

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Makes sense. Hopefully it was as well mixed as you think and it will taste like you expect

On my next up list.

I'm looking for a hoppy black ipa ? Is this one hoppy enough with IBUs in the 60s range ?
I'm wondering if I should add more hops to get it in the 90s range, will it be too unbalanced ?

That's one thing I was wanting, it is a good tasting grain bill and mouth feel, but I found it lacking on the hoppyness but I'm a huge hop head... Plus it's ur beer no need to worry about specs do what you want with it

mightydrake said:

I'm looking for a hoppy black ipa ? Is this one hoppy enough with IBUs in the 60s range ?
I'm wondering if I should add more hops to get it in the 90s range, will it be too unbalanced ?

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I made a similar beer to this and upped the ibu to 110 (by accident) and it definitely doesn't taste too bitter. The dark malts really add enough sweetness and flavor to back up the good. I dry hopped with 2 oz instead of 1 to try to gain more aroma to counteract the bitterness and it seems to make it much better.

Just finished cold smoking two pounds of 2-row with cherry pellets to add to this excellant recipe for a brew day on Saturday. Have done this brew one time previously with an addition of two ozs dry hopped and it was very very good! Hoping this addition picks it up another notch... Thanks to the OP for this recipe!

Did this as my first all grain. Ended up @ 1.061 with 6.5 gallons in the carboy. Let the boil run for an extra 30 minutes to get the volume down from 8 to 6.5 gallons after the hour boil.

Does the amount of strike & sparge water (batch sparge) you use vary based on the grain type that is used? I realize how much grain you have effects the amount of strike water needed.

For a 5 gallon batch of this recipe, what would the recommended strike & sparge amounts be? I obviously used too much..

Thanks for the advice to a newb.

cantrell00 said:

Did this as my first all grain. Ended up @ 1.061 with 6.5 gallons in the carboy. Let the boil run for an extra 30 minutes to get the volume down from 8 to 6.5 gallons after the hour boil.

Does the amount of strike & sparge water (batch sparge) you use vary based on the grain type that is used? I realize how much grain you have effects the amount of strike water needed.

For a 5 gallon batch of this recipe, what would the recommended strike & sparge amounts be? I obviously used too much..

Thanks for the advice to a newb.

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I don't think the lovibond that the grain is kilned to has much effect on absorption rate. Maybe on the multi-barrel scale, but nothing in our neighborhood.

Here's a tip. If you don't know your boiloff rate, figure it out. You also know what you want your volume to be going into the fermenter. So, lets say you determine (from my last brew day):

Boil length: 90 mins
Boiloff rate: 1.45 gal/hr
Desired batch size (into fermenter): 10.5 gal
Measured pre-boil volume (out of tun): 12.9 gal

Working backwards, I know I want 10.5 gal into the fermenter. In 90 minutes, I'll boil off 2.175 gal. Ideally, I want to come out of the tun with 12.675 gal. I came out with 12.9 gal, so I know there's something wrong with my mash calculations. To correct this, bring the whole thing to a boil, but don't start the 90 minute timer until you boil down to the 12.675 gal mark (takes approx 9.3 minutes in this case).

You can further supplement this with points if you like so you can hit your OG right on the head. But that's another story.

thadius856 said:

I don't think the lovibond that the grain is kilned to has much effect on absorption rate. Maybe on the multi-barrel scale, but nothing in our neighborhood.

Here's a tip. If you don't know your boiloff rate, figure it out. You also know what you want your volume to be going into the fermenter. So, lets say you determine (from my last brew day):

Boil length: 90 mins
Boiloff rate: 1.45 gal/hr
Desired batch size (into fermenter): 10.5 gal
Measured pre-boil volume (out of tun): 12.9 gal

Working backwards, I know I want 10.5 gal into the fermenter. In 90 minutes, I'll boil off 2.175 gal. Ideally, I want to come out of the tun with 12.675 gal. I came out with 12.9 gal, so I know there's something wrong with my mash calculations. To correct this, bring the whole thing to a boil, but don't start the 90 minute timer until you boil down to the 12.675 gal mark (takes approx 9.3 minutes in this case).

You can further supplement this with points if you like so you can hit your OG right on the head. But that's another story.

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Weird. All of your post only shows up when I replied while quoting it.

Thanks for the explanation...

Here are the specifics of the mash....

Started with the recipe as described, no modifications...

Preheated mash tun (converted recatangular cooler w/ 12" Midwest Supplies screen) with 1 gallon of 180 degree water.

While that sat, I heated 4.5 gallons of water to 165 degrees and added to the tun.

Added 14.5 lbs of grain, mash temp settled at 153-154. Vorlaufed

First batch/drain/sparge was 3.75-4 gallons @ 1.061 OG.

Heated another 4.5 gallons to 175 and added back to tun. Stirred for several minutes.

Vorlaufed again... Drained off an additional 5.25 gallons @ 1.022 OG.

Boiled the 9.25 down to 6.5 gallons over 90 minutes to OG of 1.061.

My question is. For a first time batch, how did I fare. I know the recipe estimated a OG of 1.066. 1.061 "seems" efficient to me & I assume that had I boiled it down to 5.5 gal, MAYBE the OG would have been even closer??

6.5 seemed fine to me at the time as it will allow me to bottle a gallon in addition to what I will keg.

Thanks again!

cantrell00 said:

Here are the specifics of the mash....

Started with the recipe as described, no modifications...

Preheated mash tun (converted recatangular cooler w/ 12" Midwest Supplies screen) with 1 gallon of 180 degree water.

While that sat, I heated 4.5 gallons of water to 165 degrees and added to the tun.

Added 14.5 lbs of grain, mash temp settled at 153-154. Vorlaufed

First batch/drain/sparge was 3.75-4 gallons @ 1.061 OG.

Heated another 4.5 gallons to 175 and added back to tun. Stirred for several minutes.

Vorlaufed again... Drained off an additional 5.25 gallons @ 1.022 OG.

Boiled the 9.25 down to 6.5 gallons over 90 minutes to OG of 1.061.

My question is. For a first time batch, how did I fare. I know the recipe estimated a OG of 1.066. 1.061 "seems" efficient to me & I assume that had I boiled it down to 5.5 gal, MAYBE the OG would have been even closer??

6.5 seemed fine to me at the time as it will allow me to bottle a gallon in addition to what I will keg.

Thanks again!

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Couple different things going on here. Lets take it a step at a time.

If you were aiming for 5.5 gallons, you're a bit off. But that doesn't mean that the beer is either better or worse off. You just have more liquid than you expected.

Assuming you used the same amounts of grain as in the recipe, lets see how you did. The recipe is 5.5 gallons of 1.066, which works out to 330 gravity points (5.5 x 66). You came out with 6.5 gallons of 1.061, which is 396.5 points (6.5 * 61). This tells us that your mash is more efficient than the OP's is.

How efficient was your mash?

Through a lot of math (or by just adding the ingredients to BeerSmith), we can tell that we have about 486.5 gravity points of potential here. With your 396.5 gravity points, your mash is 81.5% efficient. That's right about where you should be at this gravity IMO. The OP is 69.2% efficient, which I feel's little on the low side.

What's the point?

If you measured your gravity after the last rinse, you would have seen you had 9.25 gal of 1.043 (again, 396.5 pts). To boil down to 1.066, you needed to boil until you had 6.00 gal left. We know your boiloff rate from above is 1.83 gal/hr, so that means that you should have boiled for 1.77 hrs (1 hr, 46 min) total. Thus, you should have started your 60 minute boil timer when the liquid level was at 7.83 gal mark (approximately 46 minutes after reaching boil).

Or, we can go the other direction. If you knew your tun deadspace, grain absorption ratio, and average efficiency, BeerSmith could have scaled the grain amounts down for you so that you ended up with the 330 gravity points. That way, when your mash naturally varied by a few percent, you could correct and the difference would be in the ballpark of +/- 0.2 gal.

Final gravity: 1.013

Fairly pleased for my first AG. And thanks again for the detailed explanation of things. It is appreciated.

Now let's just hope it tastes worth a damn! I intend to dry hop for 7 days prior to kegging & have pellets.

Just pour them into the carboy?

You're asking for a mess if you just pour hops of any sort in a carboy.

Get a paint strainer bag and a sack of fishbowl marbles. Hops go in the bag, marbles go with them, whole thing goes in the carboy.

Dry hopping is a LOT easier in a bucket, though.

thadius856 said:

You're asking for a mess if you just pour hops of any sort in a carboy.

Get a paint strainer bag and a sack of fishbowl marbles. Hops go in the bag, marbles go with them, whole thing goes in the carboy.

Dry hopping is a LOT easier in a bucket, though.

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Thanks....

I can transfer it to a 6 gallon bucket fermenter too.

I wouldn't bother transferring.

If you're hopping pellets, I'm decently confident you'll get it back out. I wouldn't hop this with leaf if possible, since it's already in the carboy. Far too much mass to get back out of the carboy neck once it's soaked up all that beer.

Somewhere back in this thread, there was a suggestion to dry hop in a keg... I wonder if there is a time limit on how long you could leave the hops in there?

Say for example if it took several weeks for you to consume the keg, I would have to think that was too long but have never attempted it.

It would be easier to retrieve the strainer bag out of a keg than a carboy, for sure. Much larger opening obviously. I will probably just wrack into a keg at three weeks. Dry hop for a week & then remove it prior to carbonating.

Or I could possibly add corn sugar for that last week to condition while also dry hopping in the same keg. Assuming that is advisable. Hmm,,

Several people say you only want the hops in contact with the beer for so long, otherwise you get a grassy off-taste to develop after some time period (usually quoted as 2 weeks).

Similar trick here as to dry hopping in a bucket. Paint strainer bag and some marbles. Then tie it closed with dental floss, hang it from the floss, set it to the height you want in the keg, then close the keg lid, pinching the dental floss.

So if it takes you 2 weeks to kill a keg, hang the hops at about the middle of the keg. Wait 7 days before drinking, then once you drink half the keg (about 7 days), the hops are no longer in contact with the liquid.

Makes sense.

thadius856 said:

Several people say you only want the hops in contact with the beer for so long, otherwise you get a grassy off-taste to develop after some time period (usually quoted as 2 weeks).

Similar trick here as to dry hopping in a bucket. Paint strainer bag and some marbles. Then tie it closed with dental floss, hang it from the floss, set it to the height you want in the keg, then close the keg lid, pinching the dental floss.

So if it takes you 2 weeks to kill a keg, hang the hops at about the middle of the keg. Wait 7 days before drinking, then once you drink half the keg (about 7 days), the hops are no longer in contact with the liquid.

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Great idea!

cantrell00 said:

Somewhere back in this thread, there was a suggestion to dry hop in a keg... I wonder if there is a time limit on how long you could leave the hops in there?

Say for example if it took several weeks for you to consume the keg, I would have to think that was too long but have never attempted it.

It would be easier to retrieve the strainer bag out of a keg than a carboy, for sure. Much larger opening obviously. I will probably just wrack into a keg at three weeks. Dry hop for a week & then remove it prior to carbonating.

Or I could possibly add corn sugar for that last week to condition while also dry hopping in the same keg. Assuming that is advisable. Hmm,,

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I don't get any grassy off-flavors when dry-hopping in a keg and it takes me about a month to kill a keg.
That said, the hops you want to use in a keg need to be leaf only, pellets in a keg will turn the beer hazy green and give out grassy notes right away. I simply put the hops in a paint strainer bag and let them float on the top of beer till the keg is gone.

Scooby_Brew said:

I don't get any grassy off-flavors when dry-hopping in a keg and it takes me about a month to kill a keg.
That said, the hops you want to use in a keg need to be leaf only, pellets in a keg will turn the beer hazy green and give out grassy notes right away. I simply put the hops in a paint strainer bag and let them float on the top of beer till the keg is gone.

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I use pellets all the time in a muslin bag in my kegs. Never any problems with hazy beer after the first few days. I have also let them go for way over a month with no negative effects that I can taste. It definitely seems to take more time to extract the hop flavor and aroma when they are cold though.

Don't be afraid to dry hop it again if you want to 'tune' it up. My experience wit a grassy flavor is that you need to go way over to get that. Also, dry hop flavors dissipate pretty quickly...

Scooby_Brew said:

I don't get any grassy off-flavors when dry-hopping in a keg and it takes me about a month to kill a keg.
That said, the hops you want to use in a keg need to be leaf only, pellets in a keg will turn the beer hazy green and give out grassy notes right away. I simply put the hops in a paint strainer bag and let them float on the top of beer till the keg is gone.

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I don't either, but I usually dry hop with Centennial leaf almost exclusively. Just figured I'd throw the grassy thing out there since I've read others complain about it.

D_Nyholm said:

I use pellets all the time in a muslin bag in my kegs. Never any problems with hazy beer after the first few days. I have also let them go for way over a month with no negative effects that I can taste. It definitely seems to take more time to extract the hop flavor and aroma when they are cold though.

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I've used pellets a couple times, and never gotten the green haze either. Though something just feels better about pulling leaf out of the keg.

What is better for dry hoping pellet or leaf.

Sorry to get off the real topic of this thread but since everyone is this thread has been so helpful - I have another question in regards to a yeast starter...

If I need to take the question somewhere else, please let me know...

I am brewing another 5.5 gallon batch with a SG of 1.080 & fear that my yeast may not be large enough.. (Denny Conn's Vanilla Bourbon Porter)

I have made a 1L starter with Wyeast 1056 last night and it is on my DIY stir plate.

After researching some more - it appears that I really needed 2L...

My question is - after 24 hours on my stir plate, can I add the 1L with yeast to a an additional 1L of DME into a 2L container & continue stirring?

I don't intend to chill/decant the original 1L.. Just want to double it's size.

Is it worth the trouble? Based on everyone's experience - would a 1L starter be up to task?

The other issue is my DIY stir plate does not pull a vortex all the way down to the stir bar, only about 25% of the way. I know this isn't as effective as strong vortex but has to be more efficient than a static yeast starter or one that is shaken occasionally, right?

I intend to get the issue fixed eventually. I think it has more to do with my bar than the plate. I may end up just buying one from stirplates.com if need be. Mine seems to be hit or miss. Obviously.

Thanks-

Hi, i'm brazilian and i can't find Special Roast over here, which malt can i use instead?thanks

You can use Biscuit, Victory or Toasted.

I ended up racking to a keg @ 19 days. Added the hops in a strainer bag along with corn sugar...

Going to try and naturally condition while dry hopping in the keg... Thinking 2 weeks.

This isn't a corny keg. It is a 1/4 sanke pony keg.

Thoughts?

How you gonna get the hops into a sanke keg?

Better yet, how you gonna get them out?

They went in fairly easily believe it or not....

Getting them out remains to be seen.... Coat hanger?

I used my 7.5 gallon sanke because I had 6.5 gallons in my carboy. Obviously all would not fin in my corny. Had meant to bottle but didn't feel like messing with it.