JohnG's Homebrew: Black IPA

Norther Brewer: Black IPA All-Grain Kit

An ebony pint with a beige head is surrounded by an aromatic citrus-and-pine force field, backed by a smooth roastiness redolent of cocoa and French roast coffee. Full-bodied, hop-bitter, and boozy, this beer is compelling enough to both fuel and quash the argument of its stylistic integrity, and it goes great with a blue cheese stuffed sirloin burger or steak.

O.G: 1.075 READY: 6 WEEKS

Suggested fermentation schedule:

-- 1–2 weeks primary; 1–2 weeks secondary; 2 weeks bottle conditioning

MASH INGREDIENTS

-- 11.5 lbs. Rahr 2 row pale

--.5 lbs. Briess Caramel 80L

--.375 lbs. Weyermann Carafa III

--.375 lbs. English Chocolate Malt

MASH SCHEDULE: SINGLE INFUSION

Recommended: Sacch’ Rest: 152° F for 60 minutes. Mashout: 170° F for 10 minutes.

Actual: Add 5 g burton salts and 4 g gypsum to the mash. Add 20q 172F water to 152.5F. At 30 min good conversion, temp 150F. At 60 min the conversion looks done, temp 148F. Add 2 gal boiling water at 70 min for a mashout temp of 162F. I think I need to add less water to the mash so I can get a proper mash out and have more room for sparging. Recirculated for 10 min, then lauterd 7.75 gal into the kettle.

BOIL ADDITIONS & TIMES
--90 min boil, so not hop addition until 60 min
-- 1 oz. Summit (60 min)
-- 1 oz. Chinook (15 min)
-- 1 oz. Centennial (10 min)
-- 1 oz. Cascade (5 min)
-- 1 lb Corn sugar (5 min)
-- 1 oz. Centennial (0 min)
--Cooled with immersion chiller for 35 min to 68F. Whirlpool, then settle for 20 min. Wort was very clean into the fermenter until the end. I forgot the elbow joint on the spigot so had to lean the kettle to get the rest of the wort in the fermenter. Got about an inch of trub. O.G. 1.071

FERMENTATION
Pitched two rehydrated (80F, let cool to 70F) 11.5 g packets of Safale US 05 Ale Yeast into 66F wort. Optimum temp: 59°–75°F. Placed fermenter in a fridge with a Ranco temp controller and a FermWrap Heater, and set the temp to 67F. After 12 hours the fermentation started to pick up and the temp held at 67F. The fermentation went at a steady pace for 4 days then began to slow and on day 5 the krausen began to drop. On day 9 the gravity was 1.013, which seems about right for this dark brew, so I racked the beer to a secondary for dry hopping. A sip of the hydrometer test tube was delicious without a trace of off flavors... yea temp control!!!

DRY HOPS
-- 1 oz. Cascade on day 9 added immediately after racking to a secondary. Three days later 2oz more Cascade were added. The first oz in the carboy seemed covered with yeast. Being a dark beer, I can't really tell how much yeast is in suspension, but since it's US-05, which doesn't flocculate well, I suppose a fair amount. Let the dry hop go a week then bottled with 114 g corn sugar as primer to 3.8 gal for 2.8 vol of CO2. F.G. was again 1.013(so 7.5% ABV), and the beer tasted good! A week later there was a relatively thick layer of yeast in the bottles, so I guess a fair amount hadn't flocculated.

Why do I care how much yeast is in the beer? There was an article in the May/June 2013 Zymurgy examining dry hop aromas with and w/o yeast and the yeast appear to modify the aroma. The beer "that had no yeast produced a beer with grapefruit aroma and flavor closely associated with Cascade hops, while the beer with yeast had a rose water/geraniol (or geranium) aroma". I think I like the grapefruit aroma so next time I think I'll do a cold crash step before the dry hop and see how that impacts hop aroma.

After just a week in the bottle the beer is already well carbonated. I guess that's one perk of having a lot of yeast in suspension. The beer tastes good! Another perk with this brew is the time to make it; with temp control the beer went into the bottle after 16 days vs a month of my typical room temp brew. If I finned, filtered, kegged and forced carbed, that would approach what the commercial brewers are doing. Even with bottle conditioning, I'm at just over three weeks. I cold-crashed for two weeks to drop out yeast and haze particles and I called it done.

The brew