Black IPA Help

So, here's my attempt at my fourth batch ever. After looking around and reading up a bit I've come up with this for a Black IPA. Any thoughts/comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

11.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L
0.75 lb Carafa III
1.00 oz Cascade (60 min)
1.00 oz Simcoe (45 min)
1.00 oz Cascade (30 min)
1.00 oz Simcoe (5 min)
1 Pkgs Rogue Pacman (Wyeast Labs #1764)

According to Beer Smith this going to give me a nice black color, some good IBU's, and a pretty decent alcohol %.

Not sure if I should dry hop or not. I'd appreciate comments on that as well.

Thanks.

I attempted a black ale a couple months ago. I used 1lb Crystal 60 and 8oz Carafa II. It was brown but fairly opaque. The nice thing is after a month or so in the bottle it mellowed out and the slight roasty touch of the Carafa was very nice.

Good idea for a dark IPA. I'm not much of an IPA fan but I might actually enjoy one of those.

Mine is Simcoe and Cascade

Yummy!

Definitely dry hop it.

First suggestion...stop calling it Black IPA and start calling it Cascadian Dark Ale
Recipe looks similar to the one I did this past weekend. Wanting more of the aroma/flavor I reduced the amount of hops at 60 and opted for getting most of my IBU's from later additions.

As Northernlad mentioned, I am a little concerned I'm not going to get the BLACK I wanted and it will be more of a dark brown. But time will tell.

Kilted Brewer said:

First suggestion...stop calling it Black IPA and start calling it Cascadian Dark Ale
Recipe looks similar to the one I did this past weekend. Wanting more of the aroma/flavor I reduced the amount of hops at 60 and opted for getting most of my IBU's from later additions.

As Northernlad mentioned, I am a little concerned I'm not going to get the BLACK I wanted and it will be more of a dark brown. But time will tell.

Click to expand...

What if it doesnt have Casacade hops?

I've been going with Imperial Black Ale

Cascade hops alone don't make a CDA. Infact, you don't even need Cascade hops at all. Cascadian is from the region, not the hops used.

Definitely dry hop. How about India Style Dark Ale? (yeah, I stole that from Terripin's India Style Brown).

babalu87 said:

What if it doesnt have Casacade hops?

I've been going with Imperial Black Ale

Click to expand...

I agree with this.

It is quite likely this style will officially become CDA. The preliminary style guide has been issued and most of the professional brewers are buying in.

First of all, thank you for all the helpful ideas.

I brewed this today, and had to make a couple changes.

1. I used Carafa II instead of III (because that's what the brew store had). I upped it to .90 lbs to compensate. Don't know if that was a good idea or not. We'll see.

2. I ended up having to use more water than the program suggested. Here's my question on this as this is the second time this has happened:

I'm looking at least .50-.60 gallons of water per lb of malt. In this case for 12.9 lbs. I used almost 7 gallons of water and ended up with only 4.5 gallons. Can someone please shed some light on what I may be doing wrong or any idea as to what's going on?

The final puzzling piece is that my gravity was 1.042, when the program said it should be around 1.069. What's up with that?

Thanks.

If you started the boil with 7 gallons and only ended up with 4.5 in the fermenter, your boil-off rate was too high, turn the heat down.
Or are you saying your total water for mash and sparge was 7 but only 4.5 came out?
If your gravity was off it is likely an efficency problem, but that is pretty far off. Was your hyrdo sample at 60 or did you correct for temperature?

I started with 7 gal. total., but that's a good point about heat being too high. That makes sense. Can't believe I didn't think of that.

Actually my sample was taken at about 70. How much does that affect things?

Thanks.

Hydrometer readings are based at 60 degrees. If your sample is a lot warmer than that it changes your reading so you have to correct for that to get the proper number. The higher the temperature, the lower the reading will be.

Update:

I bottled one week ago. Broke out one bottle for myself and a friend that was over. Compared it to Rogue's NW Ale. The result I got was better taste (albeit a little flatter, since it's only been a week since bottling). Richer flavor.

Definitely a bit darker. I was worried about the taste I sampled while bottling (definitely tasted more toasty than I wanted), but it's starting to settle out nicely. Can't wait to see what it's like in another week, or two or three.

If you are brewing it...I say call it what ever you darn well please!