Black IPA - Carafa Special Type II

[hopit]

Hi all,

Going to brew a black IPA with a NEIPA hop bill and trying to work out how much Carafa Special Type II to use.

For the mash:
Pale Malt - 73.6%
CaraMunich Malt - 5.4%
Vienna Malt- 20.1%
Acid Malt - 0.9%

With RO water and additions should hopefully give me 5.4ph in the mash

For the colour I've got Carafa Special Type II (not III unfortunately) which apparently has an EBC of 1100. I was planning to cold steep this for 24 hours in order to reduce the roast and add at the end of the boil into a 30-35 litre brew (depending on boil off/loses to hops). How much should I use to get it suitably black do folk think? I have tried numerous spreadsheets and software and seem to get quite different resulting colours. I was thinking to use 500g which is 6.3% of the grist.

I should probably also note I frement in kegs so never sure of the exact amount of wort in the them post brew. I ususally just check the gravity is roughly where I want it to be (probably about 1.055ish for this one) and go with that. Not very scientific I know, need to spend some time dialling that stuff in at some point.

Cheers

[Good Ed]

You shouldn't be worried about appearance, Carafa Special II is plenty dark enough at around 1100 EBC. The Carafa Special malts have been de-husked and designed to be used in the mash without imparting harshness, I would use 3-4%.