Black Session IPA

 

  I've tasted a few black IPA's over the years and the ones I've liked the best are those that have absolutely no roasted barley flavor. These are rare, expecially here in Mexico. With a black IPA I want to close my eyes and taste a West coast style IPA with a boat load of hop flavor and aroma, subtle caramel and bread sweetness with a substantial bitter backbone.

Then, I want to open my eyes and be shocked at the fact that the beer is jet black. This is my desire and what I attempt to do with the following session IPA recipe. I've complicated my efforts by using roasted malted barley. I could more easily use Sinamar but that product is too expensive and I think I can get the same results with a little extra effort. 

In this recipe I did a cold steep of 650 grams of Carafa III de-bittered barley in 2 liters of reverse osmosis water for 12 hours in the fridge. After this cold steep I ran the liquid through coffee filters trying to initially get as much of the wet grain dust out as possible. I then let this liquid rest for another 12 hours and decanted the liquid off the top of the remainder of the slurry that had settled to the bottom. On brew day, I heated the liquid to a simmer for 10 minutes to pasturize and finally, when I added it to the wort I found there to be some additional dust/slurry in the bottom of the pan which I was careful to leave out of the beer. Just pouring in the clearest of the Carafa liquid as possible.

Through this process I hoped to mimic Sinamar.

Here are the steps and ingredients for what I'm calling "BS IPA".

Black Session India Pale Ale

Mash Eff. 84%

Attn. 83%

ABV 5.25%

SRM 28

IBU 43

OG 1.048

FG 1.008

Pilsner malt 16 lbs.

Crystal #20 8 ozs.

Carapils 1.5 lbs.

650 grams de-bittered carafa III for color only

I use the Bru'n water pale ale profile along with 80% reverse

osmosis water and 20% of the local tap water.

Mash in 5 gals. H2O for 90 minutes

Sparge with 11 gals. H2O

Boil for 75 minutes,

60 mins. Warrior for 38 ibu

10 mins. Chinook for 5 ibu

Add carafa liquid at flame out

Then Cool Pool for 20 minutes at 160f. with 180 grams of cryo

Ekuanot.

Chill to 66f. and transfer to FV.

Aerate with pure O2

Add salvaged US-05 ale yeast and ALDC

Continue fermentation for 5 days and raise temperature to 72f.

for 2 days. Then reduce temperature to 60f. and dry hop for 

24 hours with 100 grams cryo Equanot.

Then, chill to 50f. and rack to kegs for conditioning in refer.

Cheers!