Category Archives: IPA

Fade to Black IPA

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The quest to explore new styles continues! My current IPA is almost all gone, so it’s time to brew something to replace that keg. I was getting a little bored with citrusy American IPA’s, though, so something different was called for. Why not a black IPA?

As if by magic, the latest issue of Brew Your Own had an advertisement for Briess malts including a recipe for “Fade to Black IPA.” The ad copy promised “old school hops, with a new school malt bill.” Interesting! The ingredient list (below) had all sorts of things I hadn’t tried before. It’s worth noting that “Fade to Black” is a fairly common commercial beer name, with at least a handful of IPA’s bearing the moniker. I have no idea if this recipe is intended to clone of any of those.

I followed Briess’s recipe pretty closely, with only minor tweaks on the ingredients. The most notable was switching the base malt from Briess Full Pint Brewers Malt to Great Western California Select 2-row (which I already had on hand). I also modified the hop additions a touch, but everything else stayed the same.

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Fade to Black IPA

  • 11 lbs. California Select 2-row malt (Great Western Malting Co.)
  • 1 lb. 80°L caramel 6-row malt (Briess)
  • 1 lb. special roast malt (Briess)
  • 0.25 lb. chocolate dark 6-row malt (Briess)
  • 0.25 Midnight Wheat malt (Briess)
  • 0.5 oz. Galena hop pellets (13.8% alpha), 60 minute boil
  • 1 oz. Chinook hop pellets (13.1% alpha), 30 minute boil
  • 2 oz. Cascade whole hops (5.1% alpha), 10 minute boil
  • 1 Whirlfloc tablet, 10 minute boil
  • 0.25 tsp. yeast nutrient, 10 minute boil
  • California Ale Yeast (WLP001, White Labs), prepared in starter
  • 1 oz. Cascade whole hops (5.1% alpha), dry hop
  • 1 oz. Chinook hop pellets (13.1% alpha), dry hop
  • 1 oz. Galena hop pellets (13.8% alpha), dry hop

Target Parameters

  • 154° mash, 60 minutes
  • 1.067 o.g., 1.016 f.g., 6.7% abv, 67 IBU, 28 SRM, 5.5 gallons into the fermenter

Procedure

  • I prepared a 1.75L starter with 175g of extra light DME, three days in advance. After two days, I decanted 0.6L to save for later. The remainder was cold crashed, decanted, and pitched at the start of fermentation. This was the second round for this yeast.
  • I mashed in with 4.5 gallons of water at 167.7°, to hit a mash temperature of 154°.
  • After 60 minutes, I added 0.6 gallons of water at 160°, let sit 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the first runnings. Then, I added another 3.5 gallons of water at 180° to hit a mash temperature of 160°, let sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the remainder of the wort.
  • I collected 6.8 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.057, for 79% efficiency.
  • I brought the kettle to a boil and added hops and other ingredients per the schedule above.
  • After 60 minutes of boiling, I turned off the flame and chilled the wort to 78°. At this point, I transferred to the primary fermenter with aeration, and then pitched the yeast.
  • Starting gravity was 1.065, and I will be fermenting at 66°. I brewed this beer on 12 November 2016.

Equinox IPA Kegged

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Today I kegged the Equinox IPA. It had been in the primary fermenter since 27 August, just a little over two weeks. After the first week, on 3 September, I moved the beer out of my fermentation chamber (which was getting switched over for a lager), and let it ride at ambient temperature for a week or so. I figured this would be OK, because the main run of the yeast had presumably wrapped up by this point, so the risk of getting off-flavors from a hot fermentation was quite low.

Final gravity was 1.010, down from 1.062, equating to 6.8% abv. I added the dry hops (3 oz. of Equinox hop pellets) at this time; they’re in a bag, weighted down with some stainless steel washers and suspended in the keg via unwaxed and unflavored dental floss. I will leave it at ambient temperature for a few days, before tossing it into the keezer to carbonate at the lagering temperatures.

Equinox IPA

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I have been seeing a fair bit about Equinox…err, HBC 366…hops during the past year, and wanted to try them for myself. Like many of the recent American varieties, it is supposed to pack quite an aroma and flavor punch. Even if it’s totally stereotypical for a homebrewer, I do like big, aroma-rich hops, so a batch with Equinox made it onto my “brewing goals” list.

This was also an opportunity to continue my exploration of Vienna malt, so I crafted a SMaSH-ish recipe that had a decent late-hopping dose of Equinox. The only minor deviation from a true SMaSH is that I threw in a touch of de-bittered black malt for color.

Finally, I am using this batch to recalibrate some of my brewing parameters. For a few batches now, I have noticed that my wort volumes and starting gravities are a touch off, so I am going to adjust the mash and boil-off assumptions accordingly in BeerSmith. Additionally, the night before brewing, I completely disassembled and cleaned my mill (a Monster Mill 2). There was some grain dust worked into places, and as a result it wasn’t holding the gap as well as it should (hence my low mash efficiency on some previous batches). After reassembly, I set the gap to around 0.039″. As noted below, I had incredible mash efficiency (84%!), but the mash itself was a little slow to drain. So, after this brew I widened my gap to 0.041″.

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Equinox IPA

  • 12 lbs. Vienna Malt (Weyermann)
  • 1 oz. de-bittered black malt (Dingemans)
  • 0.5 oz. Equinox (HBC 366) hop pellets (14.2% alpha), first wort hop
  • 0.5 oz. Equinox (HBC 366) hop pellets (14.2% alpha), 60 minute boil
  • 1 oz. Equinox (HBC 366) hop pellets (14.2% alpha), 5 minute boil
  • 1 oz. Equinox (HBC 366) hop pellets (13.4% alpha), whirlpool
  • 0.5 tsp. gypsum, added to boil
  • 1 Whirlfloc tablet, 10 minute boil
  • 2 pkg. Safale American dry yeast (US-05)

Brewing Targets

  • Mash temperature = 149°
  • Original gravity = 1.067 (actual = 1.062)
  • Color = 8.5 SRM
  • IBU = 63
  • Note that I originally targeted this for a lower gravity, ~1.058. Because I ended up with very high mash efficency (~84%), I had to adjust the recipe per the above. If I brew this again, after adjusting my mill gap, I’ll need to tweak the malt bill to reach the same gravity.

Procedure

  • I mashed in with 4.6 gallons of water at 159°, to hit a mash temperature of 151°. The mash was down to 147° after 30 minutes, and 146.5° by 60 minutes.
  • After 60 minutes, I added 0.7 gallons of water at 190°, to raise the mash bed to 148°. After 10 minute, I vorlaufed and collected the first runnings. Due to the fine crush, it took awhile to drain the mash bed.
  • I then added 3.75 gallons of water at 182°, to raise the mash temperature to 160°. I let it sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and collected the second runnings.
  • Wow! I collected 7 gallons of wort at a gravity of 1.055, for 84% efficiency. As a result, I adjusted my original recipe to the one above.
  • As soon as the wort was on the flame, I added hops. At the boil, I added the second addition, and everything else was dropped in at the appropriate time.
  • After flame-out, I chilled the wort to 84°. This wasn’t quite cool enough to pitch the yeast, so I transferred into my fermenter and put it all into the fermentation chamber for a few hours. Once the overall temperature had come down, I pitched in the two packets of yeast.
  • Starting gravity was 1.062, a little lower than expected (probably due to a slightly lower boil-off rate than assumed by BeerSmith). I brewed this on 27Aug2016, and am fermenting at 66°.

Beer Tasting: Centennial IPA

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20160714_204030My Centennial IPA has been in the keg and cold conditioning/dry-hopping for nearly a month. Because I’m taking off soon for a few weeks, and because IPA’s are best fresh, now is as good of a time as any to do a tasting.

Centennial IPA

  • The Basics
    • Original gravity = 1.063; final gravity = 1.010; abv = 7.0%; estimated IBU = 59
  • Aroma
    • Very lightly sweet malt aroma, with a moderate hop aroma that is citrusy (slightly orange-hinted) and lightly floral.
  • Appearance
    • A hazy beer with a moderately deep gold color. The off-white head is fine and persistent, with modest lacing.
  • Flavor
    • As it should be, this is a hop-forward beer, with a smooth but assertive bitterness that fades in and then gently fades out. The bitterness has a piney note to it. The modest malt flavor tends toward the grainy side.
  • Mouthfeel
    • This is a fairly dry beer, with a relatively light body. Carbonation is moderate, as is appropriate for the style.
  • Would I brew this again?
    • This is a solid traditional American IPA–I would characterize it as squarely middle of the road; not in a bad way, just that it is tasty but not adventurous. In the original recipe, Gordon Strong noted that the recipe would be a solid base for any single hop American IPA; I agree! For this particular run, I feel like I’m getting a nice feel for what Centennial is as a hop. Compared to recent varieties such as Mosaic or Citra, Centennial is so “yesterday.” But, it has a character all its own that deservedly places it in the great pantheon of hops. I can’t say I’ll change much (other than hop variety) when I brew this again; it would definitely be OK with other American yeast varieties, but in terms of malt bill and brewing technique it’s spot-on.
  • Rating
    • 9/10