Dark Hop Burst American Ale - Recipe Help Please!

[ajclarkson]

Hey guys

I'm thinking of brewing up a Cascadian Dark Ale on Sunday (aka Black IPA, India Dark Ale, India Black Ale and all other manner of things) I'm really not looking to start a discussion on the style here, as I know there are varied opinions. What I'm looking for is a hop forward beer with a very subtle roast flavour in the back. So that lead me to throwing some Carafa Special 3 into the mix, as I'm told it won't give harshness because it is dehusked but will still give me the colour I want and impart a bit of a roast flavour.

I've also been reading about hop bursting quite a bit, and thought, as this is going to be an American style hoppy beer, why not give it a try. But as I've never done it before I'd appreciate a bit of input on the hop schedule as well. First things first, the recipe, this is for a 10L batch (aiming for 11 in the FV)

Fermentables
2.53 kg Maris Otter (84.2%)
0.21 kg Pale Crystal Malt (7%)
0.16 kg Carafa Special 3 (5.3%)
0.11 kg Wheat Malt (3.5%)

Hops
25g Cascade - 20 mins
25g Williamette - 15 mins
10g Cascade - 10 mins
10g Williamette - 10 mins
35g Cascade - 5 mins
35g Williamette - 5 mins
20g Williamette - Flameout
10g Cascade - Flameout

I'll be using WLP001

OG: 1.057
IBU: 49.7
Color: 50.9 EBC
Est ABV: 6.3%

At 50.9EBC the colour is a little lighter than I had wanted. As you aren't supposed to use more than 5% Carafa in the grain bill, I was wondering whether throwing some chocolate malt in there would give me too much of an overpowering roast flavour. I suppose the other alternative would be to cold steep some additional Carafa overnight and add that to the end of the boil? The mash volume comes out 1L above my kettle size anyway at the minute (I BIAB) so I'd have to hold some of it back anyway.

That hopping schedule would leave me with 20g Cascade and 10g Williamette left over. I'd probably dry hop, though the last 10L batch I tried dry hopping got 14g of Styrians thrown at it, and the aroma was pretty disappointing to be honest. Was that far too small an amount to expect results with?

Any and all advice welcomed as always.

Cheers

Adam

[seymour]

I bet your dry hopping complaint last time came down to a few things: timing, quantity and selection. I don't know your process, but I recommend waiting until primary fermentation is complete, then drop 'em in, perhaps a bit higher quantity than you used, and wait a couple weeks before racking to bottle/cask. Some people leave them in the serving tank for the duration. I've dry-hopped for months, will good results. How long was a sea voyage from England to India, anyway? Also, Styrian are classic dual-purpose hops, but probably aren't perfectly suited for the over-the-top lively aromas you're wanting from dry-hops.
Looks to me like you nailed it this time! Happy brewing.

[DaveyT]

+1 with the quantities. Lots of people on this here website suggest 5g per litre.

David

[killer]

I'm with Seymour... Styrian would not be my choice for dry hopping a big beer like this.
Your recipe looks spot on now. I would suggest two things... That quantity of hops will suck up a fair chunk of 10/11 L of beer so plan for it. Also, I would suggest bottling up 4 or 5 250mL bottles if you can find them (assuming you are bottling ?) to taste at 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks etc.
The first time I made a beer like this I couldn't get over how much the flavour/ hop hit changed in the first 4 weeks. It's a different beer each week up to about 4 weeks, then it settles a bit and you start to trade off the big hoppiness for something slightly smoother

Enjoy it !

[ajclarkson]

Thanks for the replies. Firstly, I reread the post and realised I made it sound like I have made this recipe before and dry hopped with styrians, I haven't it was a totally different beer!

I'll be mini-kegging this brew, but I still think it's a very good idea to bottle up a litre in a few smaller bottles to test before I tap a keg. As for the dry hopping, I'll just throw the remaining 30g in after 7 days.

As for the hops sucking up the beer, I'm putting my faith in beersmith and hoping that it has compensated for that with the volumes!!

Anyone have any thoughts on the colour issue? Cold steep extra carafa special 3 vs adding chocolate malt?

Cheers

Adam

[jimp2003]

Nice looking recipe there - very nice.

As for adding more colour I would go with steeping more of the carafa special (having said that I had about 9.5% carafa special 2 in the mash of my last cascadian dark and it tastes great...).

I think chocolate malt would be wrong and have the potential for adding a coffee flavour which I think would be wrong.

Let us know how it turns out.

[richc]

Where did the 5% carafa thing come from? I've seen loads of recipes with 10% or so of carafa special.

[ajclarkson]

Cheers for the colour input guys, I might up the carafa to around 10% in that case, that'll get me closer to the 70+ EBC I was shooting for. The 5% came from advice in Beersmith, but I'm willing to bow to actual experience instead!

[Barley Water]

Just a couple of comments:

First of all, if you wish to avoid adding more Carafa III then you might try some of that Symalar stuff. I am sure that at some point Carafa III will start adding a roasty flavor but I have never added that much myself so I am unsure where the point of overuse is.

Secondly as regards to hopping, if you want the beer to be "Americanized" then you want it to taste like a cross between grapefruit and chewing on a pine tree and smell like it as well. Yeah, you guys in the UK do subtle but over here we don't have a clue as far as that goes. Cascade will help you with that but Simcoe, Amarillo, Centenial and if you really want to get out there Chinook will get you there in spades. Citra is also something worth trying but I have not gotten there myself as of yet. I think you will find that Willimette will get completely overwhelmed by pretty much any of the "C" hops as well as the others I've mentioned. As far as a bittering hop, I like high alpha acid hops because it gets the job done with less vegital matter in the copper and my go-to hop is Warrior but there are others that will work also like Magnium for instance. You choice in hops should at least to some extent be dictated by the hardness or lack thereof of you brewing water. Have fun and good luck.

[ajclarkson]

Thanks for the comprehensive tips there Barley Water! I'm going to have a read about the Carafa some more today, I'm leaning towards adding it late in the mash maybe with 20/30 mins left to get the colour and a hint of the flavour.

As for the hopping they're some really useful and much appreciated tips. I did look for some Citra but they were out of stock at my usual couple of places, so after reading around saw the Cascade/Williamette pairing popping up quite a lot. I'll be sticking with that for this brew, as I've already got the hops in the freezer and no time to source any other C hops before brewing tomorrow! But I'll definitely keep this in mind for future American brews as I'm a big fan of the massive hop hit.

The Williamette that turned up was a higher AA than I was predicting so I might be able to adjust the schedule slightly and keep the IBUs to have a little more available for dry hopping. Also going to tweak the flameouts to an 80c steep for 15mins as I did that with my Bluebird clone and the hop aroma really comes through. Compounding that with a dry hop can only help in my eyes!

Cheers,
Adam

[ajclarkson]

OK, so brewday has arrived, and I've tweaked the recipe a bit. I've added more Carafa Special III, up to 9% of the grain bill. I've altered the hops schedule slightly to allow for the fact my Williamettes were 6.5% and not the 5.5% I had originally allowed for. This has left me with 50g of dry hops as well, which I'm happy about. I've also scaled the recipe down to 10L into the FV, as at 11L the mash volume was too high for the pot (BIAB) and I still need to do a bit of reading on the calculations for maxi-BIAB before I have a proper go at that. I'm also not entirely sure that Beersmith has calculated the hop absorption for me here, but by giving the grain bag a bit of a squeeze I normally get 1-1.5L extra on top of what I was expecting, so that should counteract this if not.

So here's what I'm running with:
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
2.25 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 80.5 %
0.25 kg Carafa III (1034.2 EBC) Grain 2 8.9 %
0.20 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC) Grain 3 7.2 %
0.10 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 4 3.4 %
20.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5 13.4 IBUs
20.00 g Willamette [6.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 12.9 IBUs
10.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 7 4.0 IBUs
10.00 g Willamette [6.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 4.7 IBUs
30.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 9 6.6 IBUs
30.00 g Willamette [6.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 7.8 IBUs
15.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 11 0.0 IBUs
15.00 g Willamette [6.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 12 0.0 IBUs
0.9 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35. Yeast 13 -
25.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop 14 0.0 IBUs
25.00 g Willamette [6.50 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop 15 0.0 IBUs

I'll get a brewday thread with some pictures up at the end of the day, as I've got a friend coming over to brew with me and I won't have chance as it goes along. It's also my first run on my new mini-HERMS system, so looking forward to that!