India Black Ale/Cascadian Dark Ale Hop Schedule Help

[KidLightning]

As a bit of background, we recently found out that my wife's great grandfather was a delivery driver for Four Roses bourbon prior to prohibition and afterwards came out as the VP of Sales for the Northeast region, or something along those lines.

I love bourbon, and have been wanting to brew a bourbon beer for a while, and came up with the idea for a "Four Roses India Black Bourbon Ale" where the "Four Roses" would refer not only to the bourbon used, but also to using the standard 4 American 'C' hops–Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, and Columbus.

And that is where I need help. Does anyone have any advice on how to design a hop schedule for such a beer or any experience using all 4 in the same beer?

My first thought was to pick the best of the 4 for bittering, flavor, aroma, and dry-hopping, and go that route, but I've read numerous descriptions of each of the hops online and have seen all 4 of them used for each of these additions. So I've also thought about just mixing the 4 and using the mixture at each stage, but that just seems like an idea that's good on paper but will fail in execution.

I'm also open to using "alternative" hopping techniques such as mash hopping, FWH, hop bursting, hopback, etc. especially if I'm able to temper the perceived bitterness of the hops and let the sweetness of the bourbon shine through a little more. And, in fact, am strongly considering a hopback rather than dry hopping as I will already need to use the secondary for the bourbon.

I don't have the recipe with me (I can post it later) but I do recall that my estimated OG was 1.070 and the estimated FG was 1.015-1.016, and I'm aiming for around 50-55 IBU's. I based the specs on this BYO article and the grain bill was modified from the AG W-10 Pitch Black IPA clone recipe there as well.

http://***********/stories/beer-sty.../2072-birth-of-a-new-style-cascadian-dark-ale

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[SnidelyWhiplash]

I've made bourbon barrel (toasted oak chip) beers but never strongly hopped. my batches were pale and amber ales, 1 oz bittering and 1oz aroma of mild english hops for both. I don't recall how 4 roses compares to the other bourbons, but makers mark has a good flavor that stands out in beer. woodford was good but too smooth and barely noticeable in the beer. there aren't many commercial examples of bourbon barrel aging on IPAs.

 

[KidLightning]

This is true, though they do exist. And I thought that a "Black IPA" would be a better place to try the bourbon as it kind of walks the line between a stout and a standard IPA.

I suppose I could research the hop schedules for some bourbon stouts and see if I can modify those to fit my ideas for this beer.

 

[mikeho]

Typically bourbon stouts are not hop forward, whereas the American Black Ale style is 50-70 IBU. 21st Amendment Hop Crisis is an Imperial IPA on oak, but not bourbon.

I have been making the Stone Sublimely Self Righteous/XI Anniversary clone, which uses Chinook, Simcoe and Amarillo. I use 3 oz Chinook at 60 min to get to 110 IBU, and 2 oz/2 oz of Simcoe/Amarillo at flameout and dry hop but that doesn't add any IBU (theoretically). You could half the bittering addition to get to the 60 IBU range, then go with 1 oz each Cascade, Centennial, Columbus at 0 and again at dry hop.