Black IPA Brew Follow Up

Good afternoon kids. It's a crappy 45° here in Oakville. Rainy and cold. But I found a great way to cheer me up. I racked my Black IPA into the secondary fermenter today. Racking is a brewing term for transferring. Not sure of the origin of the term, but I'm gonna stick with it. There is a big debate among homebrewers about the need to rack to a secondary. One side says yes, but yet others say no. Some say it increases the chance of messing up the beer, some say that the dead yeast can provide off flavors to the beer. I decided that I would rack it. So I racked 5 gallons of beer into one of my five gallon glass carboys. It looked and smelled and tasted fanstastic. I checked the Final Gravity (FG) and it was 1.021. It has a Starting Gravity (SG) of 1.075. If I did the math right, it's 7.2% ABV. Pretty damn good. It will now sit in the Fermentation Chamber for another 4 weeks before bottling.

Here's a few pics to show you the process:

Getting the process set up.

Hydrometer sitting in the graduated cylinder, full of beer.
And yes, I drank it when I was done. No sense wasting it.

Beer being racked into the secondary.

The beer, waiting on transfer to the secondary fermenter.
The crust is normal. It caused by the yeast and broken up hop pellets.

The trub, beer speak for leftovers. Mostly hops and dead yeast.

Close up view. Still smells hoppy good.

All cozy in the fermentator. See you in a month.

Close up of the labels.

Black IPA, CDA, IBA or AIBA

Holy word soup Batman. Sounds like a Federal Law Enforcement convention. There are at least 4 ways to describe the Black IPA. Can someone please pick a friggin name already.  I have recently found myself more and more intrigued by the Black IPA. I love IPA's, but I also love Porters and Stouts. IPA's are just a great style. Some like it, some don't. Same for Porters and Stouts. Dark and roasty, chocolatey or coffee like. And then there is the Black IPA, or the Cascadian Dark Ale for you West Coasters. It is also called the American Black Ale or American Style India Black Ale. It's essentially an IPA made with Porter style grain bill. The best of both worlds in my opinion. My Dad recently forwarded an article from Food Republic regarding the 5 best Black IPA's to drink now. I've also found a few more articles on the CDA. Sadly, I've only experienced one of them. I'll post the links below. Otter Creek's Black IPA is fantastic and it is available year round now. I need to start working on a Beer Network so I can find a way to find these other beers. Like an alcohol fueled Facebook. ...... Beerbook.... no that won't work. Anyway, I'll work on that. Feel free to take a peek at the links below.

 Food Republic's 5 Black IPA's to drink now

Craftbeer.com Black IPA's

BYO Magazine Cascadian Dark Ale Article

Beer Advocate's List of American Black Ales

Otter Creek Brewing

Black IPA Brew



11 March 2012. Northern Brewer Black IPA brew day. How better to end a beautiful day, then by brewing a new batch of beer. Dad was on hand to help brew. We were one brewer done since Jeff was off attempting to channel his inner ninja. I've only had one Black IPA so far from Otter Creek. It is basically a dark version of an IPA. Great malt backbone backed up with a hoppy finish. Black IPA, Indian Black Ale and Casdcadian Dark Ale are a few other names associated with this style of beer. Personally, I like the Cascadian Dark Ale (CDA) moniker. Black India Pale Ale is an oxymoron anyway. How can you use Black and Pale in the same name. It just doesn't work. I'm also excited because I found a few CDA recipes online today, so we can tweek it to our own recipe.

This brew was also the first time we had to make a yeast starter. A yeast starter is basically a larger dose of yeast thats pitched into the beer. You make a "mini beer" with boiled waetr and DME. The yeast is then pitched into this "wort". This will make the yeast start feeding and multiplying. After a day or so the yeast fdrops out and settles in the bottom. Then you make and cool another batch of wort. After decanting the old wort, you mix the new wort into the yeast and the process starts again. This increase the number of yeast cells and makes the beer move along quicker and will yield better results.





The box o' goodies




Five of the six hops. Chinook, Summit, Cascade and Centennial hops.
Five during the boil and one bag of Cascade is used for dry hopping.

Steeping the grains.

Removing the grains after steeping.

First boil before the extract syrup and hops.

Boiling away during the 60 minute boil and 5 hop additions.

Yeast starter bubbling away.

Dad enjoying a beer.

First use of my homemade wort chiller.

Chilling the wort

Fermenting away in the Fermentation Chamber

Sierra Nevada Hoptimum

Sierra Nevada 2012 Hoptimum.

Well Sierra Nevada has done it again. An over the top, slap in the mouth, whole cone hopped bomb. It is a great, great beer. A little over 10% ABV and it packs a punch. Thankfully, it's only sold in 4 packs. Check it out. You won't be dissapointed.