American Dark

[theredone]

ok so im looking for a nice dark ale.
punched some figures into ian's spreadsheet and cam up with the following

coops light tin
coops amber tin
.5kg LDME
.2kg TF choc pale(is 500-900 so its alot more toned down then normal choc malts so quantities should be increasable..... i think)
.2kg TF dark crystal

25g cascade @ 60
25g amarillo @15
25g amarillo @ 5

US-05

nubers come out at 28.9 ibu( just under the average for american brown), 54.0 EBC(just over average) and alc at 5.2%. but from personal experiance the small sparge and amount of grain bag squeezing i do i believe the grains to add a little more sugaz to convert.

i love cascade and know its prominent in white rabit, i also know that mountaing goat hightail is florally(if thats a word), so thought i might aim somewhere in the mid. MG is also described as thick and sweet in toffee flavor, hence TF dark, and i though some coffee/roasted grain flavour from the choc pale would compliment. all in all i think it looks to be a nice dark anyways.

open to any sugestions and thoughts re. anything

cheers guys

 

[theredone]

bump
anyone?

 

[manticle]

Looks fine depending on what you're going for. Personally I'd up the bittering addition to around 35 IBU but that's subjective. Centennial, amarillo and cascade all work together in a variety of combinations.

If you can be bothered, try separating your 50 of amarillo additions over the 20 minute mark so a little bit goes in every few minutes (instead of one addition at 15 and one at 20). I find it just layers the hop flavour and aroma a little more but again - pretty subjective.

 

[theredone]

sweet cheers mate. will bump it up a bit in ibu, and hop burst. so that much choc is fine yeah? ive been told to go easy with choc malts but as i said its a little more tame than most

 

[manticle]

I think 200g of a milder tasting choc should be fine. If worried you could sub in one of the carafa specials to make up the colour with less roast but I don't think 200 is too crazy.

 

[theredone]

cheers again mate will post up how it goes

 

[enoch1973]

I did this a while ago... it's a pretty good beer:
150g Carafa II
150g Caramunich II
200g Chocolate (Chocolate Malt (Bairds) 1100 - 1300 EBC from Craftbrewer)

Edit: 20g POR @ 60mins
20g Willamette @20mins
20g Willamette @ 10mins
15g Willamette @ 0mins
Dry-hopped with 20g Willamette @ day 5
Used US-05 and 2 x Morgans Unhopped Pale Malts
Nice and dark... the choc grains really come through... tastes pretty good.

 

[theredone]

cheers pete looks nice(except the por part ..... im racist against por though) will put in recipe book. wanna do this one first

 

[enoch1973]

Ha...fair enough... It's one of Boagsy's receipes actually... I was trying to copy Coopers Dark Ale and read it used POR. I'd never used POR before and thought I'd give it a go... the original recipe used 17g on Simcoe...

cheers pete looks nice(except the por part ..... im racist against por though) will put in recipe book. wanna do this one first

 

[theredone]

ok so a touch over 2 weeks now i cracked the first.(double batch so i was realy hoping it was bang on the money) not quite what i was chasing. not quite as dark as i was afta. maybe as i had to crack the grains myself with a coopers tallie. more of a very dark amber ale. malt flavour is ferkin fantastic, nice and thick, hints of choc/coffee. slightly too bitter for what i was after but this may fade within a couple of weeks, but at a guess id say maybe knowck it back to 20g casc 60 min. also amarilo isnt coming through well with the strong malt flavours, so maybe look at some dry hopping and/or upping the late additions, O GEEZ, JUST BURPED, EVEN THAT TAISTES NICE, anyways also might look at doing a 50/50 15 min add of amarillo/cascade just to bring some more citrusy flavours to the table. as for yeast, def an ale taiste about it but none of the fruty esters and its realy quite a subtle yeast taist, so more of a nice malt taist to it.

all in all a pretty bloody good beer, but there is room for improvement as yet. will try and nail it b4 i post to DB

red

EDIT: oh, and crackin bloody head retention, 3/4 way though my schoona and its still kicking around. much better than most beers ive done to date

 

[manticle]

What recipe did you end up using? bitterness will smooth out with time (and you will also start to get used to and maybe even crave bitterness as you brew more).

Room for improvement is what drives me with every brew. Never hit a perfect one yet (but enjoying trying)

 

[theredone]

recipe was as original post. however it was a double batch so i used twice the hops in a 10ltr boil. so potentially i might have fluffed somthing with hcf but i dont think so. re: bitterness, im not sure about getting to like it. for quite some time i have had many brew which shouldnt be too bitter, come out being off the chart(for my liking) this one is rated at bout 29ibu, but id put it up there with a bit over the biterness of lcpa, maybe closer to gage roads ipa, but not quite. its a wierd bitterness also, get the full mouthfeal of the malts but its the aftertaiste that has a big bitter kick(when i say big, i still drink it so i doubt its all that bad). and yeah i know malt/hop ratios differ between beers thus making it tough to compare ibu's/actual bitterness feal of beers but theres no other way i can explain it realy

 

[manticle]

More malt sweetness will also complement/lower the perceived bitterness so if you say it's not dark enough, you could add in some more ddme and/or darker crystals and balance it up. If the recipe is roughly in the ballpark then tweaking it one way or another is half the fun.