Black IPA recipe – questions please!

[arturobandini]

Hi everyone,

Having sampled a couple of those so called Black IPA’s (yeah I know it’s a misnomer etc etc and so on) recently, including Black Rocks and Thornbridge’s Raven, and enjoyed them immensely. I have decided to have a go at one for the festive season and copied my proposed recipe below. I have a few concerns about how I get my ‘blackness’ in the Ale. I have read on various US forums that it is Carafa III that gives the beer the distinctive colour and read elsewhere someone call it Carafa Special III. Anybody know which Carafa is best to use?

Also concerned with the amount of said Carafa III, a clone recipe of the Stone XB gave the amount to add as 500g Carafa III but a bit searching on JBK shows people using half that. Grateful for any opinions and ideas that people might have on the below recipe.

Cheers

Black IPA

5.100 kg Maris Otter Pale
0.500 kg Crystal
0.500 kg Carafa III
25.00 gm Summit (First Wort Hop)
20.00 gm Amarillo Hop (15 Min)
10.00 gm Fuggles (45 Min)
40.00 gm Styrian Goldings (45 Min)
44.00 gm Fuggles (50 Min)
30.00 gm Styrian Goldings (50 Min)
10.00 gm Galaxy (50 Min)
30 00 gm Amarillo (Dry Hop)
10.00 gm Styrian Goldings (Dry Hop)

[BrotherLogic]

I've used Carafa III which seemed to work well - though I think for a proper BIPA you're meant to cold steep the carafa and add it, or do it like Ali did for Indian Ink and add it when sparging. I think it's open for debate whether black IPAs should be roasty or should be darker IPAs with no roast character.

[TheMumbler]

I believe that it is a pretty new style, as far as I can see the BJCP don't as yet formally recognise it or at least don't include it as a style for competition outside of the catch all "Speciality Beer" should you care about their opinion.

There seems to a fair bit of variation in taste, so I would just go with what you like the idea of. 500g of carafa 3 will impart some noticable flavour in my experience. The idea with cold extraction or capping the grist at sparge is to reduce that flavour. Personally I like the idea of getting soemthing black but tasting like a pale ale but the two that I have brewed both had roast notes and I enjoyed them both. The only US commercial variety I have tried was pretty roasty (more so than my two homebrews).

http://www.byo.com/component/resource/a ... n-dark-ale

[Barley Water]

Yup, that is a new style that was devloped by the homebrewers in the Pacific Northwest when they had nothing better to do. There is a great debate going on concerning how roasty the beer should be, some like it roasty, some not. Then of course, you get into the whole deal about using crystal malt, etc, etc, etc. The grain of choice for darkening up the brew is carafa and you for sure want the debittered variety (they make both). I use carafa for color all the time but not at near the rates those guys are using. The extract brewers can use a product called Similar which is basicly an extract of the carafa malts. I am sure at some point the stuff will start effecting the flavor so I suspect the trick is to find the amount which gets you a dark color without noticable roast (assuming you are going that route). If you want roast I guess you can just start adding roasted barley until you get the level you are looking for. At some point I suspect many will end making making what is effectively an over-hopped stout but to each his/her own. I look at this style as being similar to making a Swartzbier where you are tring to get a black German Pils without the roast flavors. After getting the beer dark then of course you add a butt-load of "C hops" and naturally we can go on ad nauseum about the best way to do that. One of these days when I have nothing better to do, I may give this a try. I occasionally make a Dogfish Head 60 type IPA I really like, maybe I'll try darkening it just for giggles. The thing I like about new styles like this is that you get to call the shots and there really isn't a commerical example that people will compare your efforts to, at least right now. It will be interesting to see how much of this type of beer starts getting entered into the big contests, that's how the style guidelines end up getting ammended, if anyone really cares. Of course, we Americans just love to try and beat the hell out of each other so I am sure at some point the style will be codified to facilitiate that.

[WishboneBrewery]

I'd use this malt bill again, it worked well in a 4% so something a bit stronger would be a cracker, though you could reduce the amount of Carafa a little to reign-in the colour if making it a stronger ABV. Used it in my Schwarz IPA http://wp.me/pJKR-je

Pale Malt - 80%
Carafa Special III (Weyermann) – 5%
Wheat Malt – 5%
Flaked Oats – 5%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 5%

[arturobandini]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to go for Carafa Special III to remove some of the roasty flavour. I might, if not too lazy, put them through at sparge time and hope that the dark rich colour comes through.

[Lugsy]

I brewed this one recently, it's really black and hardly roasty but it does have a bitterness to it from the black malt which I'd reduce or replace with carafa special III if I brewed it again. It looks like a stout but tastes like an APA with a touch of bonfire toffee thrown in which is a nice effect