Specialty IPA: Black IPA Black Shadow - Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

MidTNJasonF

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2013
Messages
440
Reaction score
72
Location
Smyrna
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
US-05
Yeast Starter
none
Batch Size (Gallons)
5
Original Gravity
1.075
Final Gravity
1.014
Boiling Time (Minutes)
90
IBU
82
Color
38
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
14 days at 66
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
2 days at 70
Tasting Notes
The best Black IPA I have tried and probably the best beer I have ever brewed
% Amount Name
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
89.3% 12.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
5.4% 0.75 lbs. Carafa III (de-husked)
3.6% 0.50 lbs. Crystal 80L
1.8% 0.25 lbs. Chocolate Malt


Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.50 oz. Columbus Pellet 15.00 32.6 First WH
0.50 oz. Columbus Pellet 15.00 29.5 45 min.
1.00 oz. Centennial Pellet 10.50 12.3 15 min.
1.00 oz. Centennial Pellet 10.50 7.7 1 min.
1.00 oz. Centennial Whole 10.50 0.0 Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Citra Whole 11.10 0.0 Dry Hop


Yeast
-----

DCL Yeast S-05 SafAle American Ale


Mash Schedule
-------------

Mash Type: Single Step

Grain Lbs: 14.00
Water Qts: 17.50 - Before Additional Infusions
Water Gal: 4.38 - Before Additional Infusions

Qts Water Per Lbs Grain: 1.25 - Before Additional Infusions

Saccharification Rest Temp : 154 Time: 60
Mash-out Rest Temp : 0 Time: 0
Sparge Temp : 172 Time: 45


Total Mash Volume Gal: 5.50 - Dough-In Infusion Only

All temperature measurements are degrees Fahrenheit.
 
How did this one come out? Any tasting notes? I'm looking to brew a cascadian and yours is one of the few I've seen with dehusked grain (one of the key requirements for the style) but would like to know how it came out first. Is this something you've tried a lot or is it experimental?
 
My local brew club did this as a group brew which for us means we make up 10 to 15 identical "kits" all from the same source ingredients and distribute them to the club members. Everyone takes them home and brews them on their own gear. We even go so far as to crush all the grain the day the kits are distributed so the crush is identical on all kits. We bring them back to a meeting a month or two down the road and do a bunch of side by side comparisons.

So I have personally brewed it twice and have tried approximately a dozen more. It is thought of by members of the club to be the best beer we have ever done as a club brew. Many including myself feel it is one of the best beers many of us have ever made.

The beer has a wonderful smooth hop profile. Not overly bitter and just enough of the C hop citrus flavors to play well with the roast. You do get a nice roast but no astringency. On one of my two batches I missed my gravity a bit with sparge and volume issues (self caused) and had a bit more roast than the first batch. This beer really comes alive with the dry hop. I have run it through an additional oz of Citra on a Randal at a party and that was sublime.

Many of the guys in the club have re brewed it multiple times because it is so well loved. Even my non hop head wife loves it because it has the malty roast backbone.
 
Thanks Jason, exactly what I was looking for, I think this one might be easing for my next brew day. Cheers!
 
Looks tasty. I've brewed a few partial masses this style, will try your recipe soon. Would you mind adding target gravities? And priming volumes for bottles like me?

When I brew this I'm going to try a side by side with the dehusked malt vs a maltoferm addition. My local microbrewery makes a knockout black ipa and swears by maltoferm.
 
Looks tasty. I've brewed a few partial masses this style, will try your recipe soon. Would you mind adding target gravities? And priming volumes for bottles like me?

When I brew this I'm going to try a side by side with the dehusked malt vs a maltoferm addition. My local microbrewery makes a knockout black ipa and swears by maltoferm.

I will see what I can come up with but I do not have any brewing software on this computer. I do not prime since I keg and force carb but I will see I can find a calculator.
 
If all things went correctly and your beer is sitting at 68 degrees for bottling you would need 4.12 oz of sugar to hit 2.4 volumes which would be middle of style.

A 1.062 pre boil should net you the target O.G. of 1.075 if you have an approximate boil off of 12% as I generally do on this 90 minute boil. That is with a pre boil volume of 6.35 gallons. All calculations were done at 75% efficiency.
 
This looks like a great Black IPA recipe, but I'm not setup to do all grain yet :( Anyone have any tips on converting this recipe to partial mash?

I've come up with this so far, just substituting the bulk of the grain for DME, then doing a partial mash with the remainder.

7.5 lbs. Light (or Amber, thoughts?) DME
5.4% 0.75 lbs. Carafa III (de-husked)
3.6% 0.50 lbs. Crystal 80L
1.8% 0.25 lbs. Chocolate Malt

Probably going to try this later today or tomorrow.
 
Currently in secondary dry-hopping, tastes great so far! Scaled the recipe up to a 24L batch with a little extra chocolate malt. Plan on aging 2 or 3 months. Thanks for the recipe!
 
That is good to hear. I just finished off a keg of this last weekend. It was a sad day in the brewery. I finished a keg of Rye IPA a few moments later. My only consolation was I kegged 3 5 gallon batches and one 3 gallon batch that same day so the kegerator is full again.

I need to brew up a batch of Black Shadow again soon.
 
This recipe looks great. My only question is as follows. My brew buddy and I are going to have a party on May 25th and were hoping to make one more beer that will be ready (bottled, not kegged!) by that time. Do you think that if we brewed this within a week, it'd be mature by May 25th? Assuming carbonation takes two weeks, that means it'd have to be in bottles by May 11th at the latest.

It's a bit compressed, but if we brewed by April 27th, that'd give two weeks for fermentation + dry hop. But do you think the flavors would have settled in that short a time? It looks to me like a beer that has both dark grains and significant hop character might need a little more time to meld.
 
You could have it ready in 4 weeks. I generally do a 14 day fermentation schedule on APA and IPA beers. I do not secondary but you could if that is your preferred method. I just let it go 7 days then toss in the dry hops. I let them sit up to 7 additional days and then cold crash, transfer, and carbonate.

I do typically warm up the last couple of days of fermentation right before cold crashing. It may not be needed but it is a habit of mine to do that rest. I think the rest combined with cold crashing helps clear and condition the beer.
 
One warning though if you bottle condition. If you cold crash you may very well drop out much of your yeast and slow down bottle conditioning. It would still have some yeast but a lower amount. I have not bottled a beer in years so I do not know first hand how much it would affect things but the risk might be there.
 
If I use S-05 no just pitch the yeast pack. If I use a liquid than yes I do a starter. Generally my starters for liquid yeast are 1800ml.
 
Finally tapped a keg of this...It's delicious! I didn't use whole hops just pellets. But it's a winner. Next batch I'm gonna up the ibu's a bit per my tastes but as is it's solid. Thanks for sharing
 
Think i found my base recipe to go off of this sounds amazing will be brewing this weekend with a different hop schedule that is the Pliny light recipe, since it's your grain bill I'll post up how it turns out on here

Here is the hop schedule I'm doing:

1.0 oz Amarillo Mash hop
1.0 oz Columbus 14%AA 90 min FWH
1.0 oz Columbus 20 minutes
1.0 oz Simco 14%AA 20 minutes
1.5 oz Simco 14%AA 1 minute
1.0 oz Galaxy 14.1%AA 1 minute
1.0 oz Chinook 14.0%AA 1 minute
12 oz Corn sugar

1.0 oz each (Galaxy, Columbus, Simco for 5 days)
 
Brewed this today with the hops from above very promising brew that grain bill is great man taste is amazing
 
Brewed OP version yesterday. Went fine. OG 1.073. Unfortunately I did not do a 90min boil, realized it should have been after the fact but I do partial boils anyways so didn't affect final volume or anything. Sure it'll still turn out great.
 
What should the OG and FG be? Would it be alright to use 1272 yeast? I have some I just harvested.
 
What should the OG and FG be? Would it be alright to use 1272 yeast? I have some I just harvested.

I haven't used that yeast, but looks as if it has a bit of maltier taste to it from others reviews. I'm sure it would work fine. OP lists OG of 1.075 and FG of around 1.014...it's on page 1 dude hahaha
 
Brewing this up sunday. Wanted to use up my chocolate malt and looking forward to using carafa for the first time. Looking to have it ready for the festive period
 
down to 1.017 after 20 days in primary so tossed in the dry hops this evening. Had some bubbles on top that made me a little paranoid I have my first infection in 30+ batches but the sample tasted awesome so I'm chalking it up to yeast rafts...
 
All brewed up. What a day, started pretty poorly but turned out a lot better. Looking forward to this one as the sample tasted great.

Hows the yeast rafts?
 
Brewed this Sunday, November 22. Came under a bit in volume but hit 1.081 OG.

Question: when do you add the dry hops?

Thanks!
 
Kegged today. Sample tasted great. Cant wait to try with a bit of carbonation. Bit high on the gravity but still good

Added the dry hops about 14 days in. Left them in 9 - 10 days
 
Kegged this a few weeks ago. I really like it, not quite enough on the bittering end though. I went back to all extract on this due to time constraints, my extract technique was perfected in past and guy I met recently that's been brewing since 2005 (he's got thousands of dollars in equipment) couldn't believe it was an extract batch when he tasted it and asked for the recipe haha.
 
Brewed this Sunday, November 22. Came under a bit in volume but hit 1.081 OG.

Question: when do you add the dry hops?

Thanks!

I do not secondary so I dry hop in two different ways. First way is to dry hop in Primary after fermentation is complete, usually somewhere around 7 to 10 days just for my scheduling purposes. Basically as long as it is at terminal gravity and has cleared pretty well.

Second is in the keg. I will usually keg at the 10 to 14 day mark depending on my schedule. I will weight a bag with a stainless fitting (sanitized of course) and add 2 to 4 oz of hops. I will tie that off with dental floss and sink it in the keg about half way down.

Which ever way I dry hop it is at 68 to 70 degrees for 4 days. I would rather do an extra ounce or so of hop at 3 to 4 days than dry hop for longer than 4 days with a smaller amount. Longer and I start picking up notes I don't like (grassy, ect.)
 
I picked up grains for this today. Wasn't able to get any carafa III so subbed some black patent for it. And I picked up some wyeast 1217 west coast ipa to give it a try.

Any reason I shouldn't use the 1217? I also have some American ale II I could use. I've been wanting to try the 1217 and saw it at the homebrew store so grabbed it
 
I picked up grains for this today. Wasn't able to get any carafa III so subbed some black patent for it. And I picked up some wyeast 1217 west coast ipa to give it a try.

Any reason I shouldn't use the 1217? I also have some American ale II I could use. I've been wanting to try the 1217 and saw it at the homebrew store so grabbed it

No reason at all not to use the 1217. Should make a great beer.

I would be really careful with the black patent. Carafa III is a dehusked or somewhat debittered malt, black patent is not... at all. It can impart some harsh astringency and roast characteristics to a beer. Use less of the black patent than the original recipe called for of the Carafa III.

Alternately do not mash the black patent. Hold it out of the mash and once you have your first runnings pulled throw it on top of the grain bed before you start your sparge. Gives color and some flavor without the bitter harshness.
 
Too late to use less black patent it was already crushed with the rest of the grains. I'll just have to go with it the way it is and see how it turns out
 
Brewing this right now - decided to add 1lb of dry malt extract just in case to up the OG, as I think my efficiency isn't up to snuff for some reason. Boiling now. Going to add some Citra (0.25oz) at the end of boil as well as dry hop. I'll let you know how it goes in a month or so!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top