Black ipa

[Madmannvan]

I have been brewing biab and just bought a mash tun and grains for this recipe View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1435187466.581906.jpg


Anybody have any suggestions that would help it out thanks

 

[BaylessBrewer]

I would eliminate one of the crystal80 malts and sub the carafa III with midnight wheat. You'll get more mouth feel that way and the same color addition without the roast.
Also I would give it a healthy dose of citra/cascade hops in a hop stand and up the dry hop to 2 oz.
just my 2cents others will have better answers most likely.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

I would eliminate one of the crystal80 malts and sub the carafa III with midnight wheat. You'll get more mouth feel that way and the same color addition without the roast.
Also I would give it a healthy dose of citra/cascade hops in a hop stand and up the dry hop to 2 oz.
just my 2cents others will have better answers most likely.

What this guy said.

Literally drinking my black IPA that is more or less what your recipe is posted as with midnight wheat instead of carafa 3, and I used 4oz of special B to replace your caramel malts, I don't think 8oz would be bad but anymore might be a bit too chewy/sweet *unless you make sure it ferments very dry.

Edit: This is of course personal taste, I don't think I would like my black IPA as much if it was sweeter or had more body. Not to toot my own hown but I think for my own taste mine reaches that nice balance between dryness, hoppiness, sweetness, chewy/malty-ness.

 

[Madmannvan]

Thanks I think I'll add an ounce of citra to the dry hops, I have already bought the grain bill and crushed it so it's going in a as planned. Have to just wait a see what happens.
Cheers

 

[m00ps]

I will also echo the suggestion to lessen the crystal malts. I personally dont like any crystal malts in my IPAs, but this is especially important for black IPAs. With a black IPA, the goal for me is to differentiate it from a stout/porter as much as possible while still having it be black in appearance. You dont want a hoppy stout, you want an IPA that has a bit of roast. Do to this, I mash low, usually 148-150, but do a 10min mashout at 168 to extract the last bit of color from the malts. I always use midnight wheat, blackprinz or if Im out of those, carafa III to get the color since these are all "de-bittered" roasted malts. I always add 5-10% sugar by weight to dry it out, and use entirely no crystal to make sure it finished dry like an IPA should.

Also important is the hop selection. Unlike regular IPAs, many hops do nt work well in black IPAs IME. Anything floral I wont even consider, it gets weird with the roast character. I've made some weird tasting black IPAs before and now I stick to piney hops and some fruit. Simcoe Columbus and Chinook are my go-tos and I've tooled around with other parings for them. My favorite so far was Simcoe Mosaic and Chinook.

Edit: i saw you already crushed the grains, you can still mash lower to get better attenuation. Id definitely pick up more hops (at least double all the non bittering additions) and do a hopstand. This is the #1 thing that put my IPAs over the top, aside from kegging them to minimize oxidation. My black IPA last weekend had a total of 17oz of hops, 10 of which went into the post flameout hopstand. This was a 5gal batch though

 

[Madmannvan]

Thanks for the advise! More hops it is.
I use tap water with a ph of 7.5, I've been reading that a lot of people add gypsum to there mash is this a good idea or should I just go with the water I have??

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Thanks for the advise! More hops it is.
I use tap water with a ph of 7.5, I've been reading that a lot of people add gypsum to there mash is this a good idea or should I just go with the water I have??

If you don't know what your city/well water is with a water report, its better to not add anything to mess with the water chemistry. More than likely your water is just fine and doesn't need anything fancy. My city water is fairly alkaline so I'll adjust with acid malt, unless I'm doing a big black beer which I know will get me in the right mash pH range.

As for gypsum if you already have very hard water the gypsum might just exacerbate the hardness and your beer may come out very harsh on the bitterness. If you ahve a water report and your water is *very* soft water, then gypsum isnt a bad addition but you'll want to consult the proper spreadsheets and calculators for amounts and if you even need to add it depending on your water report. For me, my IPAs I give a TINY amount of sulfate since my city's water is, 19mg/l, so I bump that up to amount 50-75.

 

[chuckthebutcher]

i did 8 ounces of chocolate malt in a black ipa along with midnight wheat, and it got dinged at a competition for being too roasty for a black ipa. next time i do one im just going to cut the chocolate and do a pound of midnight wheat. i think chocolate malt adds too much roast to a black ipa.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

i did 8 ounces of chocolate malt in a black ipa along with midnight wheat, and it got dinged at a competition for being too roasty for a black ipa. next time i do one im just going to cut the chocolate and do a pound of midnight wheat. i think chocolate malt adds too much roast to a black ipa.

Do you know the malster for the chocolate malt you used? Theres a wide range on "chocolate" malt, theres some that push close to midnight wheat levels, others that could almost barely be considered chocolate. I have 8 ounces in a 5gallon batch of my black IPA, I know its Briess but I can't remember off the top of my head what lovibond it is(edit: 350L). No detectable roast character, at least not to me, and I'm very critical of super overly roasty oatmeal/milk stouts.

The balance of black IPAs is fun.

 

[kombat]

7 different malts in a Black IPA? Why did you include both Briess Caramel 80L and Weyermann Crystal 80L? Dark Candy Sugar? There is waaaaay too much going on with this grain bill. However, it seems you've already brewed it. I'm sure it will turn out to be a decent beer, but it's going to be much roastier than the style guidelines dictate, and too sweet.

For next time, a good Black IPA should be 90% 2-row, 5% dehusked roasted barley (i.e., Carafa III), and 5% "character" malt (Carafoam for body and head retention, Munich for some biscuity notes, wheat or flaked oats, whatever). That's it, that's all. Less is more.

 

[SpeedYellow]

7 different malts in a Black IPA? Why did you include both Briess Caramel 80L and Weyermann Crystal 80L? Dark Candy Sugar? There is waaaaay too much going on with this grain bill. However, it seems you've already brewed it. I'm sure it will turn out to be a decent beer, but it's going to be much roastier than the style guidelines dictate, and too sweet.

For next time, a good Black IPA should be 90% 2-row, 5% dehusked roasted barley (i.e., Carafa III), and 5% "character" malt (Carafoam for body and head retention, Munich for some biscuity notes, wheat or flaked oats, whatever). That's it, that's all. Less is more.

^^^This. Waaaaay too complicated. You'll never learn a thing about your ingredients if you use 7 malts.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

^^^This. Waaaaay too complicated. You'll never learn a thing about your ingredients if you use 7 malts.

To be fair to the guy, he only used 6 different malts, and two of those malts were the same lovibond crystal malt just from different malsters, so technically he/she only used 5 different malts. Thats only 1 more malt than most recipes for black IPAs I've seen on here have. He's still a far stretch from a kitchen sink beer if we are going dog pile him for making an overly complicated grain bill.

Edit: To take it further, I don't think flaked adjuncts tend to add a lot of flavor complexity unless you toast them, or its a super heavy adjunct beer with 6-row as the base malt. So I personally would exclude the flaked barley when I'm knocking him for making an overly complicated recipe. So really he only has 5 major flavor components to the recipe, one of which is a dark candi sugar.

Carafa 3, 80L crystal malt, chocolate malt, and the 2-Row, subtract the 80L crystal and you have basically a black IPA recipe.

Edit:Edit: If the beer ferments dry down to 1.010-1.012, the issues with crystal malts causing "cloying" sweetness will be alleviated regardless.

 

[Madmannvan]

So I reviewed my receipt from the brew store and these are the grains I ended up getting and the flaked barely can be left out as it's not crushed in with the other grains. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1435270207.178397.jpg

Not sure if it makes any difference?

 

[kombat]

Edit:Edit: If the beer ferments dry down to 1.010-1.012

There's no way that beer ferments down to 1.010 unless it gets infected.

 

[Madmannvan]

Brewed this today, dropped the flaked barley. OG ended up high as I got better efficiency than I expected. Can't wait to try this one View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1436065858.796580.jpg

 

[Madmannvan]

Well it finished at 1.013 super happy with that. Cold crashing for the next couple days the into the keg. [emoji482]View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1437105118.041986.jpg

 

[Madmannvan]

A

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Well it finished at 1.013 super happy with that. Cold crashing for the next couple days the into the keg. [emoji482]View attachment 290604

I Knew it would get down low, I'll bet it'll be really tasty once it's ready.