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Standard IPA, Double IPA, Session IPA, Imperial IPA, Hazy IPA, Juicy IPA, Brut IPA... There are many IPA styles to choose from, and we've brewed almost all of them. But alas, one managed to slip through the cracks: the Black IPA. This style of beer, also known as a Cascadian Dark Ale, is one of our favorites. It's a wonder we haven't brewed one. Truth be told, we've been distracted by shiny new things such as the brut and juicy IPAs mentioned above. No longer. We present to you, brewed by popular demand, The Hammer Party Black IPA.

Brew Day Video

Here's a video of the brew day. Full recipe details are below.

Full Recipe 

Water

We started with 8.1 gallons (30.7 liters) of Asheville, NC city water and made a few minor adjustments, which will be different for you depending on what kind of water you're using.

All of our kettles have gallon markers on the inside 

Grains

Here's the detailed grain bill for this recipe.

• Pale Malt - 10lbs, 8.0 oz. (4kg 762.7g)
• Flaked Rye - 12.8 oz. (362.9g)
• Crystal 60 - 8.0 oz. (226.8g)
• Crystal 120 - 8.0 oz. (226.8g)
• Chocolate Wheat - 8.0 oz. (226.8g)
• Carafa III - 6.4 oz. (181.4g)

All of our grains weighed out

We finely crush all our grain in a grinder before mashing with it

Mash

We did a single step mash at 149 degrees Fahrenheit (65C) for 60 minutes and did not sparge.

Adding in a grain basket

Mashing in

It's important to stir your mash to break up any clumps 

Hops, etc

We used the following hops at the amounts and times listed during a 60-minute boil.

• Columbus - 0.3 oz (8.5g) at 60 minutes

Weighing out our first hop additiong

• Centennial - 0.5 oz (14.17g) at 45 minutes
• Centennial - 0.5 oz (14.17g) at 30 minutes
• Cascade - 0.5 oz (14.17g) at 15 minutes
• Whirlfloc - 1 tablet at 15 minutes
• Cascade - 0.5 (14.17g) oz at 5 minutes

We added all our hops to a rolling boil, make sure not to boil too vigorously

Note, this beer will be plenty bitter enough with this hop schedule, but we think that many will think that hop aroma may be lacking. Thus, we suggest increasing the quantity of aroma hops or doing a whirlpool / hopstand.

Yeast and Fermentation

This beer was fermented with US-05 at room temperature for almost 2 weeks.

Holding a pack of US-05 yeast

Pitched yeast on top of wort

Note, the beer was slightly fruity. If we did this one again we'd turn down the heat some or throw it in our fermentation chamber and set it to 65F (18.3C).

Also, based on this gravity, the amount of yeast we pitched was 10% low according to manufacturer directions. And at least one popular yeast pitching calculator found online said that we significantly under-pitched. Either pitch 2 packets of dry US-05 or make a yeast starter.

Benchmarks

• Post boil water volume was 5.3 gallons (20.1 liters)
• Our starting gravity was 1.061
• Ending Gravity was 1.008
• ABV is 6.96%

Final Gravity

Tasting

It's a great beer. Dark, bitter, and chocolaty. Also a bit fruity. Perhaps a bit too fruity and not hoppy enough from an aroma standpoint. As mentioned above, if we do this beer again we'll increase the amount of aroma hops and lower fermentation temp a bit. That said, it's a great beer.

"This goes down pretty easy, it doesn't taste like it's 7%."