Brew #27 - Black IPA

After three years' hiatus, we finally got back to brew again! Though, in terms of hardware, we're back to square one. Our HERM system has long been dismantled and scattered so, in the interest of brewing, we resorted to simple extract brewing. It didn't take long for us to settle on a brew style. We wanted something new yet familiar, and since we've brewed a number of IPAs, we decided to go for a twist on it and make it a black IPA.

Ingredients

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Well the recipe didn't take long. Basically it's similar to one of our previous IPAs but with some Chocolate Malt thrown in for color.

• 1 lb Chocolate Malt
• 1 lb DME
• 6.6 lbs LME
• 3oz Cascade (8.9% AA)

Brew Method

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06/01/2014

We steeped our half pound of Chocolate malt in a muslin bag while our boil water came to temperature. It imparted a beautiful black color throughout all 6 gallons. We then dumped all of our malt extract in (dried and liquid) and got up to a rolling boil.

• T = 60 min, added 2 oz Cascade
• T = 30 min, added 1 oz Cascade
• T = 15 min, added 1 Tspn Irish Moss

Once the boil was complete, the burner was turned off and everything was drained through our counterflow chiller into our 6.5 gal carboy. OG measurement was 1.054.

Fermentation

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06/01/2014

Took a couple days for bubbles to start showing up in the airlock for this. Fermentation temps steady around 68-70°F.


06/28/2014

Racked to secondary, added 1oz Cascade (pellet) for dry-hopping

Bottling

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07/12/2014

On bottling day our FG was 1.020. Low attenuation likely due to higher fermentation temperatures than desirable. This puts our ABV around 4.42%. Not bad, but not what we wanted. Oh well. We got 24x 22oz bottles. Note: no more using pellet hops for dry-hopping (auto-siphon clogged repeatedly).


Tasting Notes

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07/25/2014

I'm on my second right now. Last night I had one bottle, room temperature, and there was an abundance of extract twang. The hop presence seemed to be wrong. However, this evening I enjoyed a chilled bottle, and those problems are gone. I'm also a bit inebriated so I'll keep this short. I like it.
-Mike