Black Ipa's

[tazman1967]

These seem to be all the go in the States atm, so I thought Id start a thread and have a crack at one...
I have tasted Ross's Obama IPA, loved it :beerbang: Great beer Ross.
I have the following recipe that Im playing around with... Advice and recipes would be great.

OG: 1060- 1074
FG: 1014 - 1020
IBU: 60-70
Colour- BLACK

BB Pale Malt
Carafa Special II
Munich II

Citra/ Chinook 60 Min
Simcoe 45min
Centennial 30min
Cascade 15 min
Centennial Dry Hop

2tsp Gypsum Mash
1tsp salt boil
Irish Moss

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

Cheers

Looking for nice Malts and Citrusy Hop flavours

 

[MHB]

Weren't Pale Ales called that to distinguish it from the OLD beer that came before the more modern Pale beer?

Sorry some things I just don't get like calling it a Radler and getting people to pay $6 for a shandy, or in this case Dark Pale Beer, Oh well it takes Toohey's longer to make New than it does Old mutter mutter grumble groan.

M

 

[Fatgodzilla]

Weren't Pale Ales called that to distinguish it from the OLD beer that came before the more modern Pale beer?

Sorry some things I just don't get like calling it a Radler and getting people to pay $6 for a shandy, or in this case Dark Pale Beer, Oh well it takes Toohey's longer to make New than it does Old mutter mutter grumble groan.

M

Mark, you old fuddy duddy ! Read the guidelines, dark is accepted as a pale, probably is the new pale !

(Us old blokes will never learn :icon_cheers: )

Go for it Taz, no mention of imperial contents but the grain will be 90%+ base, the carafa II for colour, MunichII for a bit of malt complexity. The hop combo will be great. Send both Mark and me a bottle for our consideration.

 

[katzke]

Put the carafa in at the end of the mash. It can be ground fine. We just finished off one and when we brewed it we added the carafa at the end of the mash and keep adding till we got the color we wanted. End of the mash was when we started to raise the temperature for mash out with BIAB.

We had a chewy grain bill I will not confuse you with, as I am sure many of the grains you would need to substitute. It came in at 1.070 and finished at 1.014 using US-05. Lots more hops then you are using as Americans like there IPAs hoppy.

I think the official name that is being pushed is Cascadian Dark Ale. Being down there I think I would call it Tasmanian Devil Ale or something appropriate to your region. Beer is supposed to be fun so I do not get caught up in the IPSa can not be dark by definition argument. Besides brewing a nice midnight black IPA that does not taste dark is a neat trick.

 

[Fourstar]

Weren't Pale Ales called that to distinguish it from the OLD beer that came before the more modern Pale beer?

Sorry some things I just don't get like calling it a Radler and getting people to pay $6 for a shandy, or in this case Dark Pale Beer, Oh well it takes Toohey's longer to make New than it does Old mutter mutter grumble groan.

M

There is a reason why allot of people in the beer scene in the states are now calling them IBAs (India Brown Ales.)

Which is wht they should be if you are trying to keep the roast/choc characters subtle or non existant. If you are looking for a beer as dark as a stout, it starts becoming like an American Stout. Even with using just carafa.

 

[BrenosBrews]

The Brewers Association 2010 style guidelines has it named as American-Style India Black Ale.

http://www.brewersassociation.org/attachme..._Style_2010.pdf Page 12

 

[katzke]

Which is wht they should be if you are trying to keep the roast/choc characters subtle or non existant. If you are looking for a beer as dark as a stout, it starts becoming like an American Stout. Even with using just carafa.

Have to disagree with you on that one. The wife can not stand dark beer and has found that the black IPAs are to her liking. The key is to get the color with out the flavor. Her beer did just that. Black as midnight and no dark grain taste. Some refer to the technique as a parlor trick and think that if a beer is dark it should taste dark. A properly brewed black IPA does not taste dark.

 

[bum]

Have to disagree with you on that one...[snip]...The key is to get the color with out the flavor.

Isn't that what he's saying? That's how I read it anyway.

 

[Fourstar]

Black as midnight and no dark grain taste. Some refer to the technique as a parlor trick and think that if a beer is dark it should taste dark. A properly brewed black IPA does not taste dark.

Thats basically what i said, it should not taste dark but should be dark, although i find it hard to believe you can get that colour (black) using roasted malts without imparting the flavour. I havnt had an american BIPA and the locally made one i had wasnt a midnight black IPA but deep depp brown borderline black.

Yours being midnight black (as black as black can be, unless exaggeration) I would assume it would have some roast qualities to it, purely for how dark it is.

Care to enlighten me how you managed to get 35-40SRM of colour into a beer by using roasted malts without the use of sinamar?! if you are using sinamar you might as well be using food colouring as its basically tasteless (and cheating). As you said a parlour trick but it really should be achieved by cheating eith extracts that are pretty much tasteless.

All the things ive read about black IPAs is generally getting it there to the deep brown/borderline black appearance like the colour of guinness which i consider to be borderline black as its got some transparency with ruby hues.

Anyway, the one i brewed myself from the research ive done i used enough carafa to get it just to 26 SRM with no success. It tasted quite chocolatey and slightly roasty, only a neuance but still a kickass beer that was kina like a mild american stout or US mildly robust porter with all those chocolate notes going on.

The only other ideas i have is using some really dark crystal in small %'s to get some base colour up there and then 2-3% carafa (if possible) to push black.

Im going to do some detective work on it myself by making up a soluton of x weight of grain steeped in water until i can thin it out to just borderline 'black' and use that as my gague and scale up the ratio from there. I guess the only other option is cold steeping to get the colour but minimal roast, again this is still going that extra maile and outside of traditional brewing methods.

Hmmm abit of hard work.

Oh, here is the recipe i used with a pic of the results. recipe inspired by using a schwarzbier as the base of the black IPA recipe.
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...st&p=580585

 

[Fourstar]

Isn't that what he's saying? That's how I read it anyway.

I think he disagrees with it having to be a 'brown IPA' if its not going to have the roast and choc flavours going on. Whcih by the way i still stand by unless you go down a cheats method with sinamar/colouring or complety stuff your boil pH and increase the maillard rection.

Although alot of traditional brewing uses other grain adjuncts so i guess using black sticky rice could also be used to increase colour...

 

[bum]

Ah, my apologies to you, katzke, if that is the case.

As for your last point - surely sticking purely to traditional methods is less important when making non-traditional styles? Isn't that one way forward?

 

[bkmad]

Pffft, it all looks too easy. Golden Imperial Stout, now thats what I'd like to see :icon_cheers:
http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=280
(note the date of the article)

A pale beer with roasty flavour. I reckon that would mess with my head a little.

 

[Fourstar]

As for your last point - surely sticking purely to traditional methods is less important when making non-traditional styles? Isn't that one way forward?

Not when its not all that innovative. Anyone can dump some colouring into a beer and call it a black IPA, thats where i draw the line. Unfortunatly for me sinamar is doing just that, its an extracted food colouring.

Using an adjunct like black rice is a concept i would agree with or cold steeping dark malts as another option (although i'd prefer them mashed) I think i'd just prefer to see the boundaries pushed with *traditonal ingredients (grain)/process first. :icon_cheers:

*yes i know sinamar is an ingredient made from carafa but its still an extracted colouring agent. i'd want the whole grain/adjunct used during the mash if possible.

Maybe im trying to produce the unproducable by setting these boundaries on myself, but i'd be prouder of what i have produced by doing it this way. Doing a litte more reading on reviews of BIPA's, all of them note cocoa, coffee, roast notes. None of them so far say they have encountered one thats a complete 'parlour trick'.

Maybe im just misinterpereting it 'not tasting dark' as in n'ot tasting like a stout or porter'. Although those flavours I do associate with dark beers, a Black IPA IS a dark beer.

where's a handrail, i feel dizzy!

 

[drsmurto]

Not when its not all that innovative. Anyone can dump some colouring into a beer and call it a black IPA, thats where i draw the line. Unfortunatly for me sinamar is doing just that, its an extracted food colouring.

Using an adjunct like black rice is a concept i would agree with or cold steeping dark malts as another option (although i'd prefer them mashed) I think i'd just prefer to see the boundaries pushed with *traditonal ingredients (grain)/process first. :icon_cheers:

*yes i know sinamar is an ingredient made from carafa but its still an extracted colouring agent. i'd want the whole grain/adjunct used during the mash if possible.

Maybe im trying to produce the unproducable by setting these boundaries on myself, but i'd be prouder of what i have produced by doing it this way. Doing a litte more reading on reviews of BIPA's, all of them note cocoa, coffee, roast notes. None of them so far say they have encountered one thats a complete 'parlour trick'.

Maybe im just misinterpereting it 'not tasting dark' as in n'ot tasting like a stout or porter'. Although those flavours I do associate with dark beers, a Black IPA IS a dark beer.

where's a handrail, i feel dizzy!

You add chemicals to your mashtun and kettle on a regular basis Fourstar

Last time i checked you don't find them lying on the ground in pure form, someone has gone to the effort of extracting them and purifying them for you.

So you are guilty of using extracts in your beer.

And yes, its 3pm here, I'm bored, out of coffee and my inner pedant is trawling the interweb. I'll throw myself out! :lol:

 

[Fourstar]

You add chemicals to your mashtun and kettle on a regular basis Fourstar
Last time i checked you don't find them lying on the ground in pure form, someone has gone to the effort of extracting them and purifying them for you.
So you are guilty of using extracts in your beer.
And yes, its 3pm here, I'm bored, out of coffee and my inner pedant is trawling the interweb. I'll throw myself out! :lol:

For Sale:
1 Brewery, pickup only. Used often by a cheating brewer.


Although water modification is quite traditional (brewers burtonising their water) atleast with modern brewing poractices anyway.

 

[Ross]

I'm reliably informed that there are commercially available German Schwarzbiers that use Sinnamar for colouring, I really don't see it as "cheating"

Though I do understand the sentiment...

Cheers Ross

 

[beersom]

I'm reliably informed that there are commercially available German Schwarzbiers that use Sinnamar for colouring, I really don't see it as "cheating"

Though I do understand the sentiment...

Cheers Ross

Yup, there is more than a few Schwarzbiers made with sinamar.... not to mention that the practise is not unknown in Belgium or France.
Not all of them use pre-bought Sinamar either... a thick cold steep and a boil can be used to make something very similar.
In the right beer sinamar ain't cheatin its just another technique in the brewers tool box.
There is also techniques with regard to late mash/lauter additions of roast/carafa malts that are good for colour extraction whilst minimising flavour.


Edit - Like Ross, I do understand the sentiment of feeling this way about sinamar. I formerly was a sinamar knocker until I was "enlightened" by a few brewers and a few beers

 

[katzke]

I think some missed that our brew was done with Carafa 2 as a late mash addition BIAB style at mash out. I wanted to use Carafa special or Debittered Black but could not find it locally and no place close enough to mail order in time for the brew.

The way it was used was to roll small amounts of the grain with a rolling pin to loosen as many of the husks as possible and blow them off outside using a lipped baking pan and blowing at the same time as tossing them up in the air. Then I put small amounts in the blender and ground the grain to the fine side. This was added in small amounts until the wort turned the color we were looking for. Yes it took quite a while to do this.

We did a test of cold steeping and hot steeping to see what she liked.
The test grain was not de-husked. To my surprise she liked the hot steeped liquid better. The cold steep set in the fridge for a long time and may have started to sour.

There are no agreed upon standards for this new Black IPA. About the only thing that has some agreement is that you can not have a black plae ale so recommended names do not include pale. The front runner seems to be Cascadian Dark Ale. The odd part of this is the style is not orrigianl to the NW and has its roots in Vermont. The commercial product that I have sampled seems to be just a black IPA. I have heard of some that have more of a roasted character. My impression is that any character from the dark grain used to blacken a traditional American IPA is lost by the intense hop bitterness and citrus flavor. I can not explain a dark Lager as I have not sampled any yet. A black IPA is not a hopped mild Porter.

The Black IPA we are trying to create is one that tasted blind, blind as in not seeing, would be indistinguishable from any other well crafted IPA. The grain bill for an American IPA can be so varied as to allow anything from a clean Pale Ale base to a complex grain bill with caramel malts. This beer is based on our 3rd place beer from last years club competition. It did not do well this year in part because it did not have enough hop finish. The other part is I think the brain sees a black beer and thinks Stout or Porter and causes the tong to taste what is not there. Similar to the thought that dry hopping adds to the perceived bitterness of a beer. You smell hops so it must be bitter.

All of this is based on American IPAs. These beers are all massively hopped. Some drinkers I know do not consider it a good IPA unless the first taste makes you pucker. A moderate IPA would be harder to blacken with out some of the roast character coming through.

 

[Fourstar]

I'm reliably informed that there are commercially available German Schwarzbiers that use Sinnamar for colouring, I really don't see it as "cheating"
Though I do understand the sentiment...
Cheers Ross

They also use hop extracts/ISOhop too these days! :icon_cheers: I just hope its not kostritzer. <_<

The only reason i see it as cheating for the BIPA is its supposed to be a 'parlor trick' as katzke put it. Schwarzbiers are supposed to be black(or close to) and very mildy roasty/drying.

I think some missed that our brew was done with Carafa 2 as a late mash addition BIAB style at mash out. I wanted to use Carafa special or Debittered Black but could not find it locally and no place close enough to mail order in time for the brew.

h34r: Sorry bud, i did miss that part. Sounds like you went to some lengths to get it right! Just what i like and have been ranting about. :icon_cheers:

I was thinking of doing the mashout addition of some carafa special dust until it got to my expected colour too. I'd say it wouldnt take much to get it there either, especially if its ground really fine.

 

[MHB]

Just reading the latest BYO over dinner, looks like it's going to be called:-

"American Style India Black Ale"
Colour 50+ EBC
O.G. 1.056-1.075
F.G. 1.012-1.018
Bitterness 50-70 IBU
ABV 6-7.5%

At least there is a hint of sanity Black Pale Ale forsooth. Mind you the recipe for the "Pitch Black (dare I say) IPA" looks very tasty.

MHB