RIS Recipe Critique - BPs Dark Night, But Less Bitter

I started with brewpastor's dark night of the soul recipe (for which, much thanks). I upped the grain bill a bit to cover any efficiency deficiency my system may experience with a beer of this magnitude. I also futzed with the hops to go for a little less bitterness and put some late additions for some flavor/aroma.

Batch Size: 5 gal
Boil Vol: 7 gal
Est'd efficiency: 65%
Est'd OG: 1.131
Est'd FG: 1.026
IBU: 144
SRM: 44

Grain bill:
24 lbs pale malt
1.25 roasted rye malt
1 chocolate
1 crystal 120
0.75 special B

2 oz magnum 60 min (67.7)
1 oz columbus 60 min (36)
1 oz columbus 30 min (27.6)
2 oz willamette 15 min (12.7)

Single step infusion mash at 155.

This will be my first attempt at a beer that is so friggin' 'uge. My MLT can't handle much more than a 15 lb mash, so I plan on doing this reiteratively. I will mash 14 lbs of pale and collect 4.5 gallons or wort. I will use this wort as water in the second mash for mash in, mash out and part of the sparge.

I plan on pitching this onto an american ale yeast cake (WLP001) from a speical bitter. Hoping I can get it to reach it's full 80% attenuation.

One question I have about my modifications to the recipe is the reduction in IBUs. BP's dark night has an IBU:OG ratio of 1.35:1. I've reduced this to about 1.1:1. Is this a bad idea? The reason I made this change is that I wanted to tone down the bitterness to give it a wider audience (i.e. use for xmas gifts).

I'm definitely going to bottle this one and am contemplating reserving wort to bottle condition.

Any comments or critiques would be much appreciated.

Mine is still very bitter at almost a year old(maybe over a year). For my tastes, I would lower the IBU's next time. I like hoppy beers, but not really bitter hoppy beers. Its a great beer, but I think you'd be OK lower the IBU's a bit. I've never reserved wort to bottle, so I can't comment. Good luck.

landhoney said:

Mine is still very bitter at almost a year old(maybe over a year). For my tastes, I would lower the IBU's next time. I like hoppy beers, but not really bitter hoppy beers. Its a great beer, but I think you'd be OK lower the IBU's a bit. I've never reserved wort to bottle, so I can't comment. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. That's what I was concerned about at 178 IBUs. I wonder if 144 is still going to be a little bit aggressive. Perhaps I will do all the columbus at 30 min. That would bring it down to about 135 and almost 1:1 OG:IBU.

The calculation I've found for carbonating with gyle (reserved boiled wort) is pretty simple. Divide the volume by the OG (dropping the 1 and multplying by 1000 first) and multiply by 3 to get the amount of wort needed. So at 1.131:

5 gallons / 131 = 0.038 * 3 = 0.114 gallons x 4 qt/gal = 0.458 qts of gyle. You can probably adjust the 3 multiplier depending on whether the style or your preference calls for a higher or lower volume of CO2. I'm thinking probably lower for this one, particularly considering I hope to age a lot of it for several years.