What Have I Made?

[Yeastie Beastie]

I had a hankering to do a brew last night and with no grain on hand I looked around to see what I had.
This is what I used from that:

1.7 KG Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale
1.5 KG Black Rock Dark Malt (should have used less maybee but had no use for any leftovers)
300gm Corn Syrup
50gm Armarillo Hops.
4kg Dex (only used 300gms).

Normally I would follow a recipe of a proven brew yada yada but I thought I would just see what would happen if I threw the following together:

Added 1.7 kg Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale, 1.5kg Black Rock Dark Malt and 10ltr water to pot.
60 minute boil.
25gm Armarillo Hops @ 60 mins.
25gm Armarillo Hops @ 30 mins.
Crash chilled, added to fermentor, added 300g dex and cold water to achieve 20L
Gravity before adding yeast - 1050.

Added US-05 Yeast.
Currently fermenting at 22 degs celcius.

I have 100gm Simcoe, 90gm Riwaka, 30gm Saaz and 25gm Cascade hops available and was thinking about throwing in some dry hops late in fermentation.


Any thoughts on what the outcome of this would be?
Would you dry hop?

 

[bum]

What have you made? Beyond "beer" I dunno. I'm not much of a style-stickler so I'd just be telling people it was an imperial Dark Ale or something - who's gonna argue with a free beer?

If that dark malt is nice I'd be inclined to not dry hop and leave some room for it to do its thing. If you feel it does need a little something I'd use either the Cascade or the Rikawa (assuming you're out of Amarillo). I love Simcoe but I don't think I'm a fan of dry hopping with it - seems overly grassy to me.

I'd probably try to bring the temps down to 18 or so for this one. Looking at what you've used I'd assume you're after something malty and I'd say US05 at that temp would be throwing flavours that will compete with that.

Normally I would follow a recipe of a proven brew yada yada but I thought I would just see what would happen if I threw the following together:

Stuff that. Once you've got your fundamentals down pat just jump in do your own. As long as you've got some central idea guiding you it is pretty hard to turn out a complete dud - assuming practice is all up to scratch of course. The k&b beers I've liked the least are the ones where I've followed someone else's recipe. That's not to say they are bad recipes necessarily it's just that I know what I like and can guide my beers better in that direction myself. Is it hard to know how to do that? Sorta but the quickest way to do that is to just jump in. Be sure to let us know how it travels.

[EDIT: And don't forget that there's no reason why you can't get people to have a look at a recipe before you put it down too. Yeah, sometimes people will try to change it completely to make it fit some style you're not going for but you'll never get a completely worthless (honest) suggestion. And you can always just put it down as planned even if nothing suggested takes your fancy.]

 

[manticle]

I had a hankering to do a brew last night and with no grain on hand I looked around to see what I had.
This is what I used from that:

1.7 KG Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale
1.5 KG Black Rock Dark Malt (should have used less maybee but had no use for any leftovers)
300gm Corn Syrup
50gm Armarillo Hops.
4kg Dex (only used 300gms).

Normally I would follow a recipe of a proven brew yada yada but I thought I would just see what would happen if I threw the following together:

Added 1.7 kg Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale, 1.5kg Black Rock Dark Malt and 10ltr water to pot.
60 minute boil.
25gm Armarillo Hops @ 60 mins.
25gm Armarillo Hops @ 30 mins.
Crash chilled, added to fermentor, added 300g dex and cold water to achieve 20L
Gravity before adding yeast - 1050.

Added US-05 Yeast.
Currently fermenting at 22 degs celcius.

I have 100gm Simcoe, 90gm Riwaka, 30gm Saaz and 25gm Cascade hops available and was thinking about throwing in some dry hops late in fermentation.


Any thoughts on what the outcome of this would be?
Would you dry hop?

Looks like you've made something in the region of an American Brown ale.. Have made a few (with amarillo) and tasted samples of others from other brewers and I think it's a great style. Style is only relevant when answering the question 'what is it?" or entering a comp. Beyond that - beer, dark with american hops.

I'd see how it tastes and smells after primary to see if dry hopping is the thing. I'm only familiar with cascade from your selection but that does go well with amarillo.

 

[Pollux]

I don't remember the last time I made a beer to "style", I just make what I like and try as many different combinations as I can. I'm yet to get any poor feedback from those who have tried my beer.

As for what you have made, I wouldn't be able to pin a name on it, I'd just call it beer and be done with it.

 

[glaab]

Added 1.7 kg Cascade Imperial Voyage Pale Ale, 1.5kg Black Rock Dark Malt and 10ltr water to pot.
60 minute boil.
25gm Armarillo Hops @ 60 mins.
25gm Armarillo Hops @ 30 mins.

Sounds like it'll turn out nice. Boiling 25g hops for 60min at a boil grav of 1100+ [ a guess ]
might not be the best way to do it, you'll get little bittering and also boil off the aroma. I might've just added the malt to the boil and chucked the hopped extract srt8 in the fermenter.

 

[QldKev]

Something that's going to be bitter and little aroma

Boiling the kit for 60mins = bitter + 25g @ 60min even more bitter, with only a 25g Amarillo @ 30mins in a high gravity to add some flavour leaning towards the bittering side; then no aroma hops.

With the DME I'm thinking more a Schwarzbier.


QldKev

 

[bum]

I might have followed your proposed method too, glaab, but it seems to me that he'd still get about 12-15IBU out of the 60 minute addition (depending on AA%) add that to the bitterness of the tin, which says 'Imperial' on it so you'd be expecting something in the order of mid to high 20s from a kit, right? So that puts my call of an Imperial Dark Ale well off mark but still a good bitterness to build upon - possibly even higher than many might like in a dark beer. I think as long as the malts are of a good quality he could still have an interesting (in a good way) beer on his hands here.

 

[Yeastie Beastie]

Day 2 - 1035 and smells beautiful, looking forward to the final taste.
Thanks for the feedback.
Something I have never done but I might split this into two fermentors late in fermentation and dry hop one and leave the other.