Help with Black IPA recipe

[sabrams86]

Hey everyone,

I'm new to the home brew scene, and I've made a couple of extract brews from recipes in the beginners books that I own, so I've decided it's time to move on to attempting my own recipe.

I want to make a Black IPA, but I don't want to blindly follow a recipe. What I did was looked through some of the recipes up on beersmith and found one that looked promising. Then I looked up a few clones of my favorite IPAs (Lagunitas and Modus Hoperandi). I took the grain bill from the Black IPA and the hops profiles from the other IPA's, made some minor modifications with beersmith to achieve gravity, color, and IBU that I thought sounded good.

My worry is that I'll just end up with something more like an imperial stout. I'm still really getting used to which ingredients affect the beer in certain ways, so I'm not sure how this recipe will end up. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Specialty Grains:
8 oz Black Patent Malt
8 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine
8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L
8 oz Pale Malt (2 Row)
4 oz Roasted Barley

Extracts:
1 lb Light Dry Extract
6 lb Dark Liquid Extract
3 lb Lyle's Golden Syrup

Hops:
1 oz Columbus (60min)
1 oz Horizon (60min)
0.75 oz Summit (60min)
1.25 oz Willamette (30min)
0.75 oz Centennial (30min)
1 oz Cascade (1min)

Dry Hop:
3 oz Cascade (5 days)
1 oz Centennial (5 days)

OG: 1.075
ABV: 7.4%
IBU: 68
Color: 34 SRM

 

[chickypad]

I don't think that's going to be 68 IBU's - that's a heck of a lot of hops from 30-60 including 2.75 oz of high alpha hop at 60. I'm thinking more like over 150 IBU. Maybe it's because this is a partial boil? Still seems like a lot. As with regular IPA's I think you need more later additions for flavor and aroma. In something like this I'd probably do an ounce or so of high alpha hop at 60 for about half the total bittering then all the rest late additions at 15 or less.

If you don't want it to stout-like I would leave out the roasted barley and consider using either all debittered malt like carafa special, or going half debittered and half black patent. Probably keep the total to about 5%. I'd personally leave the carapils out as you have the crystal 60 already. What yeast are you using? If liquid I'd make sure to do a proper starter and aerate your wort.

 

[norsk]

Good advice from chickypad. I understand your wanting to start from scratch, but sometimes it really doesn't pay to reinvent the wheel... What worked for me when I first began was to brew a known clone recipe that I liked, then start tweaking it to be something I really liked. In your case I'd brew up a Wookey Jack clone, then play around with the recipe a bit here and there to make something I really like... Good luck with whichever way you go...

 

[sabrams86]

Thanks for the advice. I took the hops profile as a mix between these two recipes:
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/modus-hoperandi-clone
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/the-lagunitas-ipa-clone

and the grain bill came from here:
http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/84605/black-ipa

I went and read a bit more about Carafa and Roasted Barley, so I think I will definitely make that switch. As for my IBU, that's just the value that BeerSmith spit out, so I'm not sure how accurate it calculates. So what you're saying is maybe try an ounce or so of something like Summit 17% alpha for the full boil, and then add all of the rest towards the end?

 

[sabrams86]

Thanks for the advice. I took the hops profile as a mix between these two recipes:
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/modus-hoperandi-clone
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/the-lagunitas-ipa-clone

and the grain bill came from here:
http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/84605/black-ipa

I went and read a bit more about Carafa and Roasted Barley, so I think I will definitely make that switch. As for my IBU, that's just the value that BeerSmith spit out, so I'm not sure how accurate it calculates. So what you're saying is maybe try an ounce or so of something like Summit 17% alpha for the full boil, and then add all of the rest towards the end?

 

[chickypad]

I see the modus hoperandi is listed at 168 IBU, while the lagunitas clone has quite a bit less bittering hops than you have. But yes, I would personally do something like an oz of summit at 60 (or columbus or horizon), then 4-5 oz total spaced somewhere between 0-20 min plus 2-3 oz dry hop (centennial + cascade sound good to me for all these, or whatever combo you want). Another method becoming more popular for IPA's is hopbursting where you add a minimal or no bittering addition then really load up on the very late and whirlpool hops. It's a bit trickier calculating IBU's from that, I haven't experimented too much with that technique to know how it works with Beersmith.

It looks like you also doubled the dark grains in your initial recipe. I think the changes you are planning will be better.

 

[Sippin37]

Another thing you can do to avoid the harsh bitter flavors roasted barley can contribute is to only steep them for a few minutes simply to add color. I have read about this specifically for Black IPAs to avoid tasting too much like a stout. Cheers!

Sent via carrier pigeon

 

[sabrams86]

Well in the end I ended up taking Norsk's advice. I kept second guessing which ingredients should and shouldn't go into a black IPA, and then I started to freak out about my hops profile as to whether those hops were fit for a black IPA at all. Then I realized that I'm not familiar enough with various ingredients to know just how they will affect my beer, so rather than attempting my own recipe just because I really want to make something original, I decided to stick with a brewery's recipe and really focus on tasting the various ingredients I'm using so that when I come back to the black IPA for my second attempt (probably later this year), I'll be able to have a better idea as to what flavors go well with what styles. I chose to make the Widmer's Black IPA listed on this site http://byo.com/stories/item/2013-birth-of-a-new-style-cascadian-dark-ale
Thanks for all the advise everyone!