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