Black IPA

On Saturday we brewed our first Black IPA: a clone of Stone's Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale. A traditional "IPA" in the sense that there is a strong bitterness (104 IBUS) along with ample flavor/aroma hops. However, the "black" comes from the addition of de-husked Carafa malt to give a dark color and subtle roasty flavors that will also meld nicely with the hops.

When Elise and I first had this beer, we knew nothing about it. We ordered a taster off of the menu at Rackhouse and when it arrived, Elise took a sniff and did a double take. We had this dark beer in our hands and were not expecting to smell such a hoppy beer. It is a very, very good beer and now one of the most popular commerical black IPA's available. Below is a blurb off of Stone's site about the brew:

"First brewed in 2007 as the Stone 11th Anniversary Ale, this ale was an instant hit. With us. Other folks with great taste loved it too, but we were focused on how much we liked it, and we felt it was truly sublime. That euphoria didn't last long though, as it was soon replaced with the grim reality that when we sold out of it there wouldn't be any more. For us. And that was simply unacceptable. So, we are now blessing ourselves, and you the enlightened, with this ale. Thusly, you may now revel in your own self-righteousness as you see fit with this glorious example of ours. You are genuinely welcome, as it is our pleasure."

Believe the hype. This beer is good.

I hope our "clone" attempt is close to the original and I'm pretty confident that we'll do pretty well. To make this beer a double batch, we had to use 2 mash tuns as the grain bill was so large. The previous max grain weight for one beer was ~24 lbs for our RIS (5 gallon batch). That mash was just about overflowing the mashtun and as such, I did not think we could fit the 26 lbs of grain for the black IPA in one cooler. Fortunately, Dave, along with brewing with me has started collecting gear to make beer on his own. As such, we basically did 2 five gallon batches side-by-side and then drained into the same boil kettle. We were shooting for an OG of about 1.075, but were a little less efficient and ended up at 1.070. If we get good attenuation from the yeast we should end up a little over 7% alcohol.

This beer has the largest bittering charge of any beer we've ever made, a total of 4.5 oz's of Chinook at 60 min. Comparatively, the Hoptober Pale Ale had only 1 oz at 60 min. The rest of the hops came at 5 min (4 oz mix of Simcoe and Amarillo plus the left over 0.5 oz of Chinook) and each batch will get another 3 oz mix of Simceo/Amarillo as a dry hop.

Tentatively, we are planning on bottling on February 9th which means the beer will be ready about the 23rd. I know us, and I know that we'll crack the first one open after a week to see how things are progressing. When that happens I'll post some tasting notes and hopefully a glorious review.

On another front, we sampled the week old IPA last night. First impression: pretty good, but not amazing. The nose is nice, with floral and citrus aromas dominating, but the bitterness is somewhat "restrained." The estimated IBUS for the IPA were ~80, and for the 10 gallon batch, the first bittering charge was 2 oz of Chinook. The beer is good, but not a good IPA. Elise said it was a Pale Ale and needs to be more bitter to be an IPA. For the next IPA I think we'll do something similar to the black IPA and have a very large (at least 3-4 oz's) initial bittering charge and then a normal hop schedule after that. We can also try to increase the sulfates in the water to try to accentuate the bitterness next time. All in all, I think the beer will be decent. More of a pale ale type beer, but still a good beer nonetheless.