Otter Creek Black IPA clone recipe help

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joyceman

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Tried this over the weekend and while I generally dont like IPAs, this one really grabbed me.

Otter Creek's site has this description...

Color: Black
IBUs: 60
ABV: 6.0
Malts: 2 Row, Caramel 60L, Carafa III
Hops: Apollo, Centennial Citra

I dont usually (really ever) brew alot of heavy hop recipes and would like some input on the hop schedule. Heres my thoughts for an extract recipe...

Steeping Grains:

6oz Roasted Malt
8oz Caramel Malt

Fermentables:
6lbs Dark Liquid Malt Extract
2 Lbs Dark Dry Malt Extract

Hops:
2oz Apollo 60 min
1oz Apollo 45 min
1oz Citra 30 min
1 oz Centennial 5 min

Yeast:
Safale US-05 Dry

Does this look workable?
 
Did you run that recipe through beersmith or beertools? Apollo hops are somewhere around 18-20% AA, I think almost three oz before the 45min mark is going to scream IBU's. Over the 60 on the description anyway.
 
As I'm new to brewing I will leave any advice out, but I'd love to hear what other people have to say. I'd love to brew something similar to the Otter Creek IPA.
 
Tried this over the weekend and while I generally dont like IPAs, this one really grabbed me.

Otter Creek's site has this description...

Color: Black
IBUs: 60
ABV: 6.0
Malts: 2 Row, Caramel 60L, Carafa III
Hops: Apollo, Centennial Citra

I dont usually (really ever) brew alot of heavy hop recipes and would like some input on the hop schedule. Heres my thoughts for an extract recipe...

Steeping Grains:

6oz Roasted Malt
8oz Caramel Malt

Fermentables:
6lbs Dark Liquid Malt Extract
2 Lbs Dark Dry Malt Extract

Hops:
2oz Apollo 60 min
1oz Apollo 45 min
1oz Citra 30 min
1 oz Centennial 5 min

Yeast:
Safale US-05 Dry

Does this look workable?

I am hoping I can help you out a little bit on the recipe though I have never tasted the beer your trying to clone.

First off nearly all of your color in Black IPAs comes from the Carafa III so I would use Light LME and DME instead of the Dark extract. If you steep 1 lb of Carfa III and 1 lb of Caramel 60 in a 5 gallon batch with light extract you will have a SRM of 40ish for your beer which is a nice black.

As for the hop schedule depending on the AA% of the Apollo which go go super high I would use 1 oz at 60 minutes and then some 1/2 oz. at 30, 1/2 at somewhere between 15-0 minutes.

I would keep all of the Centennial and Citra between 15-0, and maybe a 1/2 oz. of each for a dry hop.

Since I have not tasted the beer before I am assuming it has great hop flavor and aroma and is not just a huge super bitter beer.
 
Thanks for the responses and I appreciate the criticism on the hops. I ran the original recipe through beer calc and you're right, the numebrs are insanely higher than I wanted. 200 something... I think the first time i ran it I was looking at HBU numbers instead of IBUs.

Heres the modified which I think is on the agenda for this weekend...

Steeping Grains:

6oz Roasted Malt
1lb Caramel Malt
1lb Carafa III

Fermentables:

6 lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract
2 lbs Light Dry Malt Extract

Hops schedule:

1oz Apollo 60 min
.5 Apollo 30 mins
.5 oz Centennial 10 min
.5 oz Citra 5 min

Yeast:
Safale US-05 dry

Dryhopped with .5oz Citra & Centennial

Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it.
 
Update on this one as Im going to dry hop this weekend.

My LHBS was out of Apollo and I ended up subbing Nugget as my bittering hop and uppping the boil to 90 mins. That should get my IBUs up around the 60s. Color came out very nice and the aroma is very close to what I was looking for. OG was right about where I was looking for. Im looking at a week of dry hopping and then 3 in bottles. Should be able to give you a idea on the flavor in 4 weeks. I doubt the the change in the bittering hop will hit the flavor profile very much, at least thats my hope.
 
Fort those still interested... I opnened the first one last night. Color and aroma were right on target. The flavor was good, but not quite as full as the original. At bottling I noticed that I overfilled my carboy with water and ended up bottling about 5.8 gals or so. The hops bite was not as strong as I was hoping, probably due to the sub and the overfill.

All said, im very happy and plan to redo this recipe again, this time after I track done some Apollo.
 
Fort those still interested... plan to redo this recipe again, this time after I track done some Apollo.

Did you ever try this again? Did you make any changes to your grain bill and hop quantities/schedule?

This Black IPA is one of my top 5 beers of all, I absolutely love it. I keep a keg of it at our lake house in VT (just down the road from the Otter Creek Brewery :ban: ) but I'd love to nail down the recipe so I can have it on tap at home.
 
Ive done three total batches of this since the OP. That makes this one of my favorite recipes going by times brewed.

The last batch I picked up some Apollo from Williams. I also tinkered with the roasted barley and upped it a little. The flavor was still there, but the bitterness was too strong in my opinion. Otter's BIPA has a real nice smooth flavor/aroma with a decent amount of bitterness. With this one the bitterness was too front and center. It was still a good beer, but my first try was better.

I just brewed another batch and went back to nugget for my bittering. I used only 3 oz of roasted barley and added 6 oz of special roast. I just dryhopped with .5 of Citra & Centennial on Tuesday. Should bottle next week to have some ready for the end of the year. Im looking forward to it.
 
Thanks, appreciate the update. I'm going to give this a try with all-grain and see how it goes. It would be interesting to keep this thread going and refine the recipe as others try it too.

Just stopped by Otter Creek to get a keg of it and there's a two week waiting list because it's flying out the door to distributors (who unfortunately have first dibs). Apparently it's not our secret anymore. I need to nail down this homebrew recipe so I'm always at the top of my own list.
 
Im biased, but i think the hop schedule is real close. I just need to tinker with the malt a little bit to work out the percentages. With AG you should be able to really nail it down.

My latest batch goes to bottles sometime next week. Ill update you around xmas when I try one.
 
Bump

Anyone brew an all grain of this ever? I think i could throw something together but figured I would see if others have tried first
 
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