Founders Inspired Artist Black IPA Questions

[gabbz]

Looking to make something similar to Founders Inspired Artist Black IPA, and was wondering if anyone with a pallet more refined than mine might be able to give some input on the hops in there. From my perspective I think there's a good amount of floral notes in the nose, so I feel like there's a large amount of Centennial, but even that could be way off. Anyone want to help a dude out?

 

[Robar]

Looking to make something similar to Founders Inspired Artist Black IPA, and was wondering if anyone with a pallet more refined than mine might be able to give some input on the hops in there. From my perspective I think there's a good amount of floral notes in the nose, so I feel like there's a large amount of Centennial, but even that could be way off. Anyone want to help a dude out?

x2

I also liked this beer. Wish I had a clue about the recipe, but wish in one hand... If anyone could help out with this it would be appreciated.

 

[Robar]

Well we (Brew buddy Ken & myself) took a stab at it and while we didn't think we would be spot on we do believe we're in the neighborhood.

12lb Canadian 2 Row
1lb Munich L10
1lb L60
1lb Midnight wheat

Mash at 154 for 60 min running off 6.5 gal wort.

1 oz Citra @ 60
.5 oz Simcoe @ 30
1 oz Centennial @ 30
1 oz Citra @ 15
.5 oz Simcoe @ 5
.5 oz Centennial @ 5
.5 oz Centennial Dryhop

The dryhop I plan on doing in secondary for 5 days. OG was 1.070 @ 75 deg. Pitched on half of a freshly vacated Nottingham yeast cake.

Shortly after flame out we tasted the wort and it had a pretty healthy chocolate flavor coming through. I suspect this will fade a bit with fermentation and a bit of conditioning. May have used a bit more Midnight than we should have, but it does taste promising.

 

[Robar]

Well here we are Wednesday. We brewed this up last Wednesday so I thought I'd pop her open and get a sample. Chocolate flavor DID calm down a lot! I think it's pretty close though I have no Inspired Artist left so given another week in primary then a week or so in the secondary with the last 5 getting dry hopped w/ 1/2oz of Centennial I think we'll be close enough to say so. The hops taste right, the grain bill tastes right so I'd say we landed firmly in the neighborhood. Spot On? I doubt it! But if you liked Founder's Inspired artist this is a great place to start.

 

[gabbz]

Thanks for posting your thoughts. Interesting you had Citra in there. I didn't really get a sense of it in there, but I'm admittedly a rube when it comes to discerning flavors. I am curious to hear how yours finally turns out.

I was also inspired (no pun intended) to attempt something in this ballpark, but kinda threw together stuff I had on hand. Here's a link:

http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/black-ipa-423

I used Carafa II cause that's what I had sitting around, and I wanted a little coffee/roast to it I threw in the chocolate. My OG was much lower (1.084 or so?) than the calculator told me, but whatever, it'll produce the desired effect. It's currently entering week 2 of dry hopping. My initial tastes weren't exactly like what I can recall from Founders' either, but I was super pleased with the results nonetheless. I can't wait to see what its like after the dry hopping.

 

[Robar]

Research has told me that Mosaic Hops are in this beer but we couldn't lay hands on it at the time. I read they are bred from Simco and have been described as Citra on steroids. So we took as stab at creating the 88 IBU's from what we had and what we could taste. Like I already mentioned the chocolate calmed way WAY down and the flavors all seem to be there at this early stage. Now it's just a waiting game.

 

[gabbz]

Just ordered a pound of Mosaic. I am now even more curious what your results seem like of that recipe because based on some similar research regarding this hop, I'm pretty excited to use it in all kinds of stuff including a more educated guess at cloning Inspired Artist. I'll be bottling my experimental dark IPA thing on Sunday, so I'm ready for some new adventures.

 

[Robar]

Okay so 16 days after brew day I have it cold crashing but no carb yet. It's flat but maybe that also lets me pick out some of the flavors better. Trying neglect the hops (Not all that easy to do) the best way I can describe the flavor is that it has a smoothly transitioning slight roast to med-lt. coffee that finishes with chocolate.

Even though there is a lot of citra in this beer the simco does come through under the centennial. There is a lot of complex characters in this beer as there are in Inspired. I have no Inspired Artist left to put side by side with it, but the taste is very similar and quite tasty.

The two ingredients that I know for sure are in this beer are Mosaic hops which I had no access to and Midnight wheat. As we did you use different hops to get dang close, but I believe the Midnight wheat is a MUST.

I'm not sure if mosaic was the only hop in this beer as we thought we could also detect centennial, but 88 IBU's is your target. With the additions in the above recipe you'll hit 87.

If you brewed the recipe I listed above as is I'm pretty sure you'd be pleased with it. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

 

[Robar]

Thought I'd throw a little update out on this beer. As stated above the OG was 1.070 Well just racked it from the secondary to a keg for a little carbing and took a reading and ended up with an FG of 1.012 so thats something like 7.6 ABV?

My plan for this is to eventually dry hop with a half oz of whole leaf Centennial for a few days then bottle off the keg.

 

[Robar]

Okay yet another update. Quite chocolatey at the finish, but pretty tasty none the less. I dry hopped with a half oz of centennial for a week. I'm going to pull my hop bag and hit it with a second dry hopping just for ****s and giggles.

To try to get closer to the original beer I'm going to cut the midnight wheat to 8oz when I make it again and see how we fair. This is a dark hoppy chocolatey IPA that really is pretty tasty, but I think there is room for improvement.

All in all I am happy with this first run on this recipe. Perfect? No, but it is a good starting point for a very interesting beer. If anyone gives it a go please chime in and let me know your thoughts on it.