Extract Black Rye IPA/Cascadian Dark Rye Ale Critique

[IsildursHeir]

After a long 2 year hiatus (except for a cider around Halloween) I am starting to get back into brewing. Due to being in an apartment, I am still on Extract, and I am looking into kicking it off with a Cascadian Dark Rye Ale/Black Rye IPA. I've seen a few AG recipes on HBT, but nothing yet for extract. I've spent quite a bit of time reading through BYO's guide on Cascadian Dark Ale, and some time comparing several Rye IPA and Black IPA recipes, which resulted in the following in BeerSmith.

Any critiques/comments are greatly appreciated as I am pretty rusty at this point.

Cascadian Dark Rye Ale
Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Est Original Gravity: 1.065 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG
Est ABV: 6.5 %

Ingredients
Amt Name
6 lbs Rye Malt Extract Syrup
5 lbs Rye Malt Extract Syrup - Boil 15 min
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
12.0 oz Carafa II
4.0 oz Chocolate Malt

Hops
1.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 45.0 min
1.00 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min
0.25 oz Amarillo [9.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
0.25 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days

Yeast
Safale 05

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

I would only have two main issues with the recipe.

What are the contents of the rye malt syrup? Just out of curiosity since some malt extracts when they make the wort they may already have a caramel/crystal malt in it. If the rye malt syrups you have are 100% rye only then you can ignore this (to a certain extent), if theres any crystal malt in the syrups I would skip the crystal 40L.

I would move the 15 minute additions to less than 10 minutes. Or if you want to keep the 15 minute additions I would get more hops and put them at the 5 minute mark.

 

[m00ps]

im guessing the syrup is like 50-50 between rye and 2row with a bit of crystal added. If you cant find out for sure, I would definitely take out the crystal as there is likely already more than enough from the syrups

but mostly, you need more than 4oz of hops for an IPA. The bitterness will be where it should be from the redundant bittering additions (id suggest to pick one and adjust accordingly), but the hop flavor and aroma will be nearly nonexistent

 

[IsildursHeir]

This is the Malliard Malts LME from Northern Brewer. Contents are: 70% 2-row, 20% malted rye, and 10% caramel 40.
Everything I am seeing is saying the sweet spot for Rye is around 20%, so eliminating the caramel makes sense.

How does this look for hop schedule?

1.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 45.0 min
0.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min
1.00 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min
0.50 oz Amarillo [9.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
0.25 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
0.50 oz Amarillo [9.20 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

This is the Malliard Malts LME from Northern Brewer. Contents are: 70% 2-row, 20% malted rye, and 10% caramel 40.
Everything I am seeing is saying the sweet spot for Rye is around 20%, so eliminating the caramel makes sense.

How does this look for hop schedule?

1.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 45.0 min
0.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min
1.00 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min
0.50 oz Amarillo [9.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
0.25 oz Warrior [15.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
0.50 oz Amarillo [9.20 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days

I would take the hops you have at 45 minutes and 30 minutes and move them to 10 minutes or less. The bitter youll get from the warrior at 60 minutes should be more than enough, same with the warrior dry hop, generally warrior is used as purely a bittering hop. If you have the .25oz of warrior already you can move that to 60 minutes and do 1.25 at 60 and you should easily hit your desired IBU marks.

Any hop additions over the 20 minute mark (some would argue over 10 minutes of boil) basically will not contribute any aroma or flavor qualities to the beer (in general, some hops are so robust they carry through). Since the two quality of hops we want in an IPA are A: Aroma/Flavor (I am putting these together) and B:Bittering, we can tailor the hop schedule to improve both. If anything over 20 minutes is only going to increase bittering without an appreciable gain in flavor/aroma then we can skip adding anything between 20 and 60 minutes. Since we are looking for only bittering with the addition at 60 minutes we can just do a single charge of some high AA hop like warrior (I love warrior, I have like 8oz of a 16oz bag sitting in my freezer). Usually when I decide my hop schedule I figure I am going to get either 90% of my AAs from the 60 minute addition, OR I am going to completely assault the beer with 10-12oz of hops in at the 5 minute mark or less.

So if you want a 90IBU beer you have two routes kind of. A 60 minute addition that gets you around 70-80 IBUs then all other hops are added at less than 5 minutes so you do not get an appreciable about of IBUs from them (but massive juicy hop character). Or you can do a FWH with your bittering addition (it is in most calculators calculated at 20 minutes of boil for the amount of IBU), then when you hit the 5 minute mark you just start DUMPING loads of hops in so you can get the right IBU level, and just face melting hop aroma/flavor.

 

[IsildursHeir]

I would take the hops you have at 45 minutes and 30 minutes and move them to 10 minutes or less. The bitter youll get from the warrior at 60 minutes should be more than enough, same with the warrior dry hop, generally warrior is used as purely a bittering hop. If you have the .25oz of warrior already you can move that to 60 minutes and do 1.25 at 60 and you should easily hit your desired IBU marks.

Makes sense. I appreciate the input.