Wanting to make a black ale (not ipa)

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timbudtwo

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So I want to make a dark black beer because it has that manly factor to it, but I don't like IPA's. I was trying to figure out something with black patent, but being new to grains I was unaware of Carafa. So I put something together in brewcalculus. Does this look okay?

malt & fermentables
6lbs American Two-row Pale
2lbs Munich Malt
12oz Carafa III
8oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine


hops
1.0oz Centennial 50 min
1.0oz East Kent Goldings 10 min


yeast
Nottingham

31 srm
37 ibu
5.1 abv

Edit: I might dial back the centennial to .75 oz which should bring it down to 32 ibus, but I am looking for suggestions.
 
so, the main reason carafa is used in Black IPAs (cascadian dark ale, etc) is that they provide dark deep color with very little flavor. For your black ale, you could use jsut about any black malt and get more flavor. Black IPA styles (not really an official style yet) aims to be like a normal IPA just black in color with no dark malt flavor. IF you re trying to make a black ale, i think all bets are off for what you can do for flavors. Point beer and Session have a couple of black ales that seem like they have very little hop flavor - i like each of their offerings.

i think your recipe looks ok
 
... For your black ale, you could use jsut about any black malt and get more flavor. ...

i think your recipe looks ok

You say it looks okay, but do you have any suggestions? I don't want it to be super strong like a porter. I am really going to a deceptively dark beer. Malty but not too sweet, so ill probably mash around 150 to keep things dryer.
 
What do you *want* it to taste like? So far, you've only mentioned what you want it to look like. It's going to be dark, for sure, so you're good there. But no one can comment much if we don't know what you're going for.
 
What do you *want* it to taste like? So far, you've only mentioned what you want it to look like. It's going to be dark, for sure, so you're good there. But no one can comment much if we don't know what you're going for.

Ah, sorry sorry.

I started a different thread a couple days back when I was not as old or wise and I pulled a threadkilla on it, which is where I pulled this recipe from.

I like beers that are more grainy that hoppy but with a fair hop taste (I love centennial for that.) A toasted malt is much preferred in my ales which is why I put in the Munich malt. I read that a Munich and 2 row mix with give you a mild biscuit similar to MO. I don't like them overly sweet (I think Fat Tire is sweet) so medium to dry, which is why I was opting for the lower mash.
 
^^^ In that case, I'd brew on as planned. Your reasons for including everything (in said amounts) are there and reasonably accurate. The only change I'd look into (and even then maybe reject if it just doesn't fit your vision) is a combination of munich and victory malts, keeping in the 2-3lb range total. Keep it in the .5-.66 IBU:OG range, and you'll be right where you want, hop-wise. Try it out and tweak things next time depending upon what you want from it.
 
^^^ In that case, I'd brew on as planned. Your reasons for including everything (in said amounts) are there and reasonably accurate. The only change I'd look into (and even then maybe reject if it just doesn't fit your vision) is a combination of munich and victory malts, keeping in the 2-3lb range total. Keep it in the .5-.66 IBU:OG range, and you'll be right where you want, hop-wise. Try it out and tweak things next time depending upon what you want from it.

Awesome!
Thank you so much. Ive only been brewing others recipes until this one! I probably will try the munich+victory
 
Good luck. I hope it turns out well. Don't forget to enjoy the process. Recipes are rarely if ever going to turn out just right the first time. But with some planning, they'll be quite good, and you learn a lot in the process of changing them little by little each time to make improvements. Don't forget to keep detailed logs of everything you do! That might be the most important step in crafting your own recipes. Bah, I'm rambling. Anyway, have fun with your first recipe!
 
so, the main reason carafa is used in Black IPAs (cascadian dark ale, etc) is that they provide dark deep color with very little flavor. For your black ale, you could use jsut about any black malt and get more flavor. Black IPA styles (not really an official style yet) aims to be like a normal IPA just black in color with no dark malt flavor.

A couple of these points are not accurate.

First, Carafa Special does indeed have a decent amount of flavor. It's just dehusked so it's not as burnt tasting and the grain doesn't contribute as much grain bitterness as the regular, husked versions. Carafa Special 2 still lends a good amount of chocolate malt flavor for instance. Carafa (without the "special") still has the husks.

And to say that Black IPA is supposed to have no dark malt character is inaccurate as well. There's supposed to be dark malt in the aroma and flavor, but hops should dominate. In my experience, if you use your usual roast and/or chocolate malts or the carafa malts with the husk, it will just taste like a stout or porter. If you use the dehusked (ie, carafa special) versions, that roast/chocolate will not dominate as much and mixes nicely with the piney notes you can get from some American hops.

Proposed CDA style guidelines are here:

http://www.hotv.org/pdfs/CDA.pdf
 
A couple of these points are not accurate.

First, Carafa Special does indeed have a decent amount of flavor. It's just dehusked so it's not as burnt tasting and the grain doesn't contribute as much grain bitterness as the regular, husked versions. Carafa Special 2 still lends a good amount of chocolate malt flavor for instance. Carafa (without the "special") still has the husks.

And to say that Black IPA is supposed to have no dark malt character is inaccurate as well. There's supposed to be dark malt in the aroma and flavor, but hops should dominate. In my experience, if you use your usual roast and/or chocolate malts or the carafa malts with the husk, it will just taste like a stout or porter. If you use the dehusked (ie, carafa special) versions, that roast/chocolate will not dominate as much and mixes nicely with the piney notes you can get from some American hops.

Proposed CDA style guidelines are here:

http://www.hotv.org/pdfs/CDA.pdf

First I've heard of carafa being anything other than a darkening grain.
 
First I've heard of carafa being anything other than a darkening grain.

Carafa has great flavor. It is just less bitter and harsh than RB or Black patent. Carafa 1 is similar to Choc. malt. and Carafa 2 is more of a roasted flavor with some choc. and Carafa 3 is Roasted. Because it is more smooth you can hide it in hops a little easier, hence the use in Black IPA, Cascadian Dark ale, or Black brutal (the original "black IPA")
 
That's why you need to distinguish between "Carafe" and "Carafa Special." Big difference between them.

Carafa Special also has flavor though. It's just mellower than the Carafa *with* the husk.

From here: http://www.weyermann.de/eng/faq.asp?umenue=yes&idmenue=62&sprache=2

CARAFA® Special
Question Why does CARAFA® Special (de-husked) Chocolate Malt have a smoother flavor than does regular CARAFA®? Could you provide some detail on the Carafa® dehusked malts--methodology, how and why the dehusked barley is smoother in flavor. It is definitely evident while tasting the malt.
Answer Roasting germinated barley tends to scorch the grain's husks and give the finished malt a slightly, or even severely, burnt flavor. Some dark beers, however, taste much better -- at least according to some brewers and consumers -- without the bitterness that comes from scorched husks. We at Weyermann have found a way, therefore, to remove most -- though not all -- of the husks before sending the barley through the malting plant and into the roasting drum. The de-husking process is similar to commercial rice polishing. It is desirable, howver, to leave about 40% of the husk material intact, because the husks also protect the kernel from damage. The de-husked finished malt is our CARAFA® Special. Like our regular CARAFA® (the roasted malt with all the husks), we make CARAFA® Special available in three color variations: Type I with a color rating of approximately 300 - 340 °L, Type II with a color rating of approximately 375 - 450 °L, and Type III with a color rating of approximately 490 - 560 °L.

It's my understanding that Carafa Special is what's used in some German Schwarzbiers and Dunkels. And those definitely have roasty character but it is indeed softer. My Black IPA uses Carafa Special and has a good amount of roasty character as well, but the bitterness of regular roast is not present.
 
Not disagreeing in the least. It's a much more subdued roastiness, it's what you get out of a properly-made schwarzbier. The Carafe Special is the *right* malt for the India Black Ale/CDA style.
 
Not disagreeing in the least. It's a much more subdued roastiness, it's what you get out of a properly-made schwarzbier. The Carafe Special is the *right* malt for the India Black Ale/CDA style.

Cool. Cheers. I just wanna make sure some folks understand. Don't want people who haven't used it to misunderstand the flavor and its use.
 
I made a similar beer to this. And got a lot of good feedback. In fact, it's probably tge mist popular beer I've made. I only used a half pound of roasted malt and a half pound of light roasted malt from briess. That was enough to give me the desired roastiness and color but not so much of the bitterness. I used a pound of amber malt and the rest of the bill was 2-row. Used centennial and cascade hops.

So, what I'm saying is that i think your recipe will work well for your desired outcome. Mine came out closer in hoppiness to an IPA but it was exactly what you want: a black ale that surprises the drinker because it doesn't taste like a porter/stout.
 
OHHH, I get you. I was using beer calculus and couldn't find carafe "special" III but I found carafe III so I assumed they were the same. One of those "cara is a brand name" type things so I figured it was nothing major.

Thanks!
 
So I want to make a dark black beer because it has that manly factor to it, but I don't like IPA's. I was trying to figure out something with black patent, but being new to grains I was unaware of Carafa. So I put something together in brewcalculus. Does this look okay?

malt & fermentables
6lbs American Two-row Pale
2lbs Munich Malt
12oz Carafa III
8oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine


hops
1.0oz Centennial 50 min
1.0oz East Kent Goldings 10 min


yeast
Nottingham

31 srm
37 ibu
5.1 abv

Edit: I might dial back the centennial to .75 oz which should bring it down to 32 ibus, but I am looking for suggestions.

Not sure how your calculations achieved 37 ibus.. I punched it into pro mash and got 53 ibus. What would happen if centennial was substituted by cascade hops?
 
Not sure how your calculations achieved 37 ibus.. I punched it into pro mash and got 53 ibus. What would happen if centennial was substituted by cascade hops?

Here is the recipe I saved on hopville via brew calculus:
http://hopville.com/recipe/606222/home-brew/black-ale

are you using the homebrew or the pro version of promash? I don't know if there is a difference but perhaps the pro version expects a higher extraction of acids?
 
Well, there are different formulas for calculating IBUs (Rager, Tinseth, some others). Not sure one is necessarily more accurate than the other, they're all just estimations and in many cases not especially accurate in terms of calculating actual IBUs (Pliny the Elder clones being calculated to 281 IBUs, when it's near-impossible to actually get 100 IBUs in solution).

I'd imagine that could be one difference. The other, more basic difference is that I'm not seeing the hops' actual AA% being listed in this thread, so there may be different assumptions being used. You can see a pretty big variance year-by-year in a lot of these hop crops (Saaz came in a couple years ago at 1%!).
 
I'd imagine that could be one difference. The other, more basic difference is that I'm not seeing the hops' actual AA% being listed in this thread, so there may be different assumptions being used. You can see a pretty big variance year-by-year in a lot of these hop crops (Saaz came in a couple years ago at 1%!).

Well, I am a huge fan of BierMunchers centennial blonde, which he says comes in at 21 ibus. I want to get closer to 30 so I upped it from 1/2 oz to .75 oz and the results seem relatively accurate in my opinion.

Could brewcalc be way off?
 
My suspicion is that the calculations get less accurate as the IBUs get higher (I'm not sure they account for it become harder and harder to add more IBUs to an already-saturated wort).

Thing is, though, BierMuncher isn't sending his beer off to a lab, his 21-IBU is just a calculated value using one of those formulas. I suspect none of us is having the bitterness of our beers scientifically measured. Outside of the handful of beers that give us good IBU numbers on the label (or where the brewers disclose the info in an interview), how would we really *know* with any degree of accuracy what 30 IBUs tasted like, versus 25 or 35? How do we really know that our estimations are within a small variance from the actual number, unless we're having our beers tested?
 
My suspicion is that the calculations get less accurate as the IBUs get higher (I'm not sure they account for it become harder and harder to add more IBUs to an already-saturated wort).

Thing is, though, BierMuncher isn't sending his beer off to a lab, his 21-IBU is just a calculated value using one of those formulas. I suspect none of us is having the bitterness of our beers scientifically measured. Outside of the handful of beers that give us good IBU numbers on the label (or where the brewers disclose the info in an interview), how would we really *know* with any degree of accuracy what 30 IBUs tasted like, versus 25 or 35? How do we really know that our estimations are within a small variance from the actual number, unless we're having our beers tested?

If the system was as broken as you say, I doubt people would use it at all. To me it seems like a fairly good way to judge whether something with be mild, kinda bitter, bitter, more bitter, or quite bitter. That is if it is even marginally accurate.

Whenever I buy hops it has a level of AA on it that was measured from that batch (I presume.) There should be sufficient maths to determine the rate of extraction per a given time at the boiling point of water, perhaps take a few degrees based on elevation. Wouldn't this be chemistry and not guesswork?
 
Who the hell is arguing the other side of that? Of course it's useful. WTF?

That doesn't change a thing about what I'm saying, it's just an estimation, there are different formulas that give somewhat different results, and the calculated values are not always particularly close to the lab-measured values (especially in higher IBU beers). And, the figures that you're going to be calculating here aren't going to be "accurate" unless you know the AA% of the hops being used.

Not to mention the other variables that the formulas may or may not account for, like the age of the hops, how they've been stored, the boil volume, the wort gravity, etc, etc.

Hell, if it was THAT accurate, there wouldn't be so many different formulas to pick from!
 
Who the hell is arguing the other side of that? Of course it's useful. WTF?

That doesn't change a thing about what I'm saying, it's just an estimation, there are different formulas that give somewhat different results, and the calculated values are not always particularly close to the lab-measured values (especially in higher IBU beers).

Hell, if it was THAT accurate, there wouldn't be so many different formulas to pick from!

I understand where you were coming from, but I just had in mind the difference between 35 ibu's and 50, which is pretty huge in my book. With a margin of error that great it would mean the system was useless. One software says you have a bitter IPA and the other says you have a slightly hoppy ale.
 
the_bird said:
Hell, if it was THAT accurate, there wouldn't be so many different formulas to pick from!

I know from my course load at an engineering school that there are 100's of formulas for the same process and all get about the same answer. Some are just more work to get a .01% better answer.

I know for promash there are standard ibu estimates and maybe brewcalc has more up to date values. For promash it had centennial at 10.75% and who knows for brewcalc.
 
Back to page one and you request - look at New Belgium's 1554 there is a Clone recipe in Brew magazine. Ferments at 65, and sounds like it fits your bill. I've done two batches and it's gotten good feedback from those that I shared it with.
 
Back to page one and you request - look at New Belgium's 1554 there is a Clone recipe in Brew magazine. Ferments at 65, and sounds like it fits your bill. I've done two batches and it's gotten good feedback from those that I shared it with.

I'll pick up a 1554 and see how that is. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Here is the recipe I saved on hopville via brew calculus:
http://hopville.com/recipe/606222/home-brew/black-ale

are you using the homebrew or the pro version of promash? I don't know if there is a difference but perhaps the pro version expects a higher extraction of acids?

The reason you got low IBU's on beer calculus is because you put in 4 gal boil volume in the recipe under the hop information. The boil volume should be the volume at the start of the boil. For a 5 gallon batch it is generally 5.5-6 gal. You put your batch size at 5 gallons which should be the amount you will be putting in the fermenter.
 
The reason you got low IBU's on beer calculus is because you put in 4 gal boil volume in the recipe under the hop information. The boil volume should be the volume at the start of the boil. For a 5 gallon batch it is generally 5.5-6 gal. You put your batch size at 5 gallons which should be the amount you will be putting in the fermenter.

Whoa! I didn't even notice that. I wonder why it was different because I didn't modify it, at least not intentionally. I will fix it. Thanks!

Edit: I thought that was the batch size. I didn't realize there was a hop one. So I need to set the hop one to the initial boil size? Example: Batch size = 5 gal, under hops Boil = 6 gal
 
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