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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Vernal Black IPA

When we went to Oregon last month, Black IPA was the new hot thing for all the west coast breweries! So I decided to give it a try.
We found a Black IPA in Minneapolis after our Oregon trip, but it was falsely labeled- it was dark and roasty and not hoppy at all. As a knowledgeable traveler, I felt obliged to present my friends and fellow homebrew club members with what I believe is a true west-coast Black IPA.
Northern Brewer has a Black IPA kit for sale, so I looked at their recipe and combined it with one of mine, making a few substitutions to what I had at home.
Here is the recipe (extract, 5 gallons)
6 lbs. light DME
1 lb. crystal 60
2 oz. Roasted Barley
4 oz. Black Malt
1 oz. Zeus @ 60
1 oz. Simcoe @ 30
1 oz. Centennial @ 15
1 oz. Cascade @ 5
1 oz. Simcoe @ 0
1 oz. Simcoe (I'm pretty sure) to dry hop.
Yeast- white labs california 001





The hops were pretty much based on Northern Brewer's hop schedule, with one or two substitutions. The Northern Brewer recipe called for chocolate malt instead of roasted barley and black malt. I wanted to do the black malt for sure, with a hint of roastiness, so I based my grains off my "Hoppin' Sweet Color" ale which calls for roasted barley.
This was brewed on the vernal equinox, hence the name, and the OG was 1.057. The taste seemed right on, so I'm excited for the end result!

Update: This brew was racked to the secondary and dry hopped (I'm pretty sure with Simcoe, although I failed to write it down) on 3/28. We kegged it on 4/29 at a final gravity of 1014. The color was too brown and the flavor was too roasty. It's not bad, it just doesn't taste like a black IPA should. I will definitely be altering the recipe for attempt #2, and I'm open to suggestions!

1 comment:

  1. I brewed attempt #2 of this recipe today, using a little less roasted barley and 6 oz. of debittered black malt instead of 4 oz black patent. I also used ahtanum hops at the end of the boil instead of simcoe. I'm still planning on dry hopping it in the secondary with simcoe. The OG was 1057, just like last time.

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