Brewing: My First Homebrew - Black IPA (name TBD)

My recipe started out as an India Brown Ale that would hopefully recreate the IBA brewed by Dogfish Head.  I did the research about hop and malt types and amounts and started plugging them in to ProMash.  The result was right about on par with what was expected. But somehow, in the process of tweaking ProMash, I ended up jacking the roasted barley from 2 ounces to 8 ounces.  Since the recipe also included 8 ounces of chocolate malt, my final SRM (color) ended up being about 38 out of 40 (40 is black).  Here is the recipe:

     Grains (for color) 

 1/2# Crystal 60L 

 1/2#  Chocolate Malt 

 1/2# Roasted Barley 

      Malt (sugars) 

  7# Light DME 

 1/2#  Amber DME

 1/2#  Caramelized Brown Sugar (at 10 mins left in the boil)

        Hops 

 1 oz Warrior, pellets (at 60 mins)

 1/2 oz East Kent Goldings, pellets (at 20 mins) 

 1/2 oz Liberty, pellets (at 20 mins)

 1/2 oz East Kent Goldings, pellets (at 5 mins)

 1/2 oz Liberty, pellets (at 5 mins) 

 1 oz Cascade, whole leaf  (a 7 days)  

    Yeast

Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale yeast (~1 L starter)

5 gallon batch

Est Starting Gravity: 1.076

Brewer: Me

Assistant Brewer: APK (Adam)

Brew Date: March 20, 2011

Brewhouse: APK's Kitchen

Assisting Beer #1, Founder's KBS (formerly Kentucky Breakfast Stout)

The grains are weighed and split into two grain bags.

The grains were steeped at 160*F for 20 minutes in 3 gallons of water. Steeping the grains gives the beer it's color.  Here is where I went from an India Brown to an  India Black.

Assisting Beer #2, Port Brewing Wipeout IPA

After steeping, the grains were rinsed with a 1/2 gallon of 170* water to salvage any remaining sugars on the hulls. This is similar to sparging in an all-grain brewing process. The whole pot was then brought to a boil.  The light DME and amber DME were added and brought back to a boil.  One ounce of Warrior hops were added and the timer was set to 60 minutes.

Assisting Beer #3, Founder's Double Trouble

Different hops look different.  Here are the E.K. Golding's and the Liberty being weighed out.  A half ounce of both were added at 20 and 5 minutes left in the boil. Lots of hops needed for an IPA!

In go the hops at 20 minutes left in the boil!

Assisting Beer #4, DuClaw Serum DIPA 

A half pound of brown sugar was caramelized in a double boiler and added with 10 minutes left in the boil.  You can also see the copper coil of the immersion chiller.  This gets dropped in at 10 minutes too so that it can be sanitized in the boil.

At 60 minutes we flame out and run the chiller.  The temperature was reduced to about 75* in about 5-10 minutes. Then the whisk is used to aerate the wort for the yeast to do it's thing.

After aeration, the wort was decanted to a sterilized 6 gallon glass carboy.  There was so much crud transferred, the final volume of water added (2.5 gallons) brought us up to 5.5 gallons in an effort to compensate for losses due to future racking.  

The Ringwood yeast has been pitched and the airlock is on.  Time to find a cool, dark, calm place to let the yeast do their thing.  The measured starting gravity was 1.070.  The additional water brought us down from the target 1.076.

After 12 hours the airlock was full of krausen so a blow-off tube was fashioned to a partially full one gallon jug.  (left) A further 12 hours later show the blow-off tube working well, and the beer doing its thing. (right)

Also assisting in the beer department, Brewer's Art Ozzy, APK IPA, Ballast Point Sculpin IPA and Bell's Hopslam.