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By matticus, September 24, 2011 12:00 am

Ooook so I’m back. A long hiatus but the brew kettle is back on and this IIPA was just chillin’ in the door of the fridge.

This beer is advertised at 20 SG and 100 IBU and it’s certainly big, the bottle indicates 8.5% so that means it finishes at around 3.5 plato. For the rest of you home brewers out there that is 1.083 to about 1.014. That is a pretty efficient fermentation for the size of brew so i’d say it was fermented fairly low and at with a pretty simple malt bill.

20lbs Great western american base malt.

4lbs Munich

Here is the more complicated part.

60min

1oz simcoe

2oz amarillo

1oz centennial

45 min

1oz cascade

30 min

1oz galena

1oz simcoe

1oz centennial

15 min

2oz cascade

5 min

1oz cascade

1oz amarillo

dry hop

2oz amarillo

1oz simcoe

Mash it at 149 for 90 mintes and boil it for 90 minutes. As recommended hop it early and often. The yeast is pretty neutral and it certainly is not what hop valley used but I think the Rogue Pac-man yeast would fit this well. This would be a fine time to brew a pale ale and use that yeast cake to kick start this double.

So yeah off the cuff and I’m about at the bottom of this 22 so my grammar is only going to get worse from here. Give it a try and if it is awesome send me some.

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By matticus, April 15, 2010 3:37 pm

So there has been a push as of late to create a new beer style definition for a brew that a lot of craft brewers have been playing around with.

Here is a example (Hopworks Secession Black IPA) and a bad cell phone pic… :

Essentially it is what a Black Bier is to a standard Pilsner… a black pils. Take that concept and use a hop foward floral west coast IPA as the base. Basically you take your normal IPA recipe and make it dark, it isn’t thick like a porter but its dark like one. You get a bit of roast, but the upfront american hop and aroma are there in a big way like a standard west coast IPA. My preference is towards the lower gravity versions of these… I find them more interesting… I don’t think bigger is always better.

Lately Widmer released it’s pitch black IPA which from what I know is the first really wide spread release of the style.

The biggest discussion I have heard surrounding the naming convention is where “it started” I first had offerings from Rogue with the mogul madness beers, skull splitter, captn’ sigs etc… John Maeir at rogue obviously likes it, was it first… probably not … does it matter? Probably not. There is a pretty interesting discussion with the San Diego contingent claiming this style as well, here is a snip from Jamie Floyd at ninkasi:

“This year’s collaboration brew in Eugene for KLCC beer festival is a
Belgian style Cascadian Dark Rye Ale. All of the Eugene brewer’s
agreed that it should be Cascadian Dark as well. Besides, if it isn’t
established as Cascadian, the guys in San Diego will take credit for
brewing it first like every other beer in the world. I have all ready
heard flack from some of the California brewers who want to call it
DPA : Dark Pale Ale which is even more oxymoronic.”

All in all great beer and interesting jockeying going on with what to call it.

There is another good discussion here at this blog:

hoppress

The guys at Oakshire have a lot to share on the subject as well as a offering of their own:

O’ dark:30

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By matticus, February 25, 2010 6:19 pm

Concordia ale house down the street every year does a west coast beer competition to see who gets bragging rights of the best beer that year. Here are the rules:

http://www.concordia-ale.com/beer_brawl.php

We are going to walk on down and stumble back tonight. Let us know if you went and what you thought… we’ll post something later on with what we thought.

Update:

So Washington won by 4 points total. Here are the results:

http://www.concordia-ale.com/news.php

I guessed a few of them correct by taste, the poleeko pale, HUB pale and the double bastard. I mistook the tricerahops for pliny the elder… I’ll have to do a side by side there.

The black raven pale from washington was fantastic, really unique great balance and really earthy.

Not bad, 25% accuracy blind? It did make me think what beers I would pick.

It was a good time getting a group together and tasting everything, and any excuse to talk about beer is fine by me.

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By matticus, February 24, 2010 4:14 pm

I will disclose, I do not really like most of New Belgium’s beers… especially fat tire. With the exception of a occasional 1554 or 2 below in the wintertime, my fridge rarely sees a NB product . It isn’t that they are bad or of poor quality I just find them to be a dull impersonation of each style they represent. With so many other options I never find my self thinking… “man a fatty sounds perfect right now.”

That being said… I’ll try any new IPA any brewery comes out with. NB follows the trend of the other craft breweries by releasing their own big hop forward IPA. Lets look at it:

Thick white head that laced down the glass. Aroma is substantial, a bit floral but really herbal/grassy. They used a lot of big high alpha american hops (chinook and simcoe) and finished with a very traditional IPA/pale hop (cascade). The chinook bittering is really present and gives it that power that you can’t really get from anything else. There is a bit of citrus flavor in there which is a bit more of the classic “IPA” hop flavor you find in a lot of beers and of course the ever present cascade. There is a malt profile in this beer but it doesn’t pair up, it has that New Belgium biscuit flavor but it is faint.

I enjoyed this beer and it is cool to see a bigger brewery cross the 1:1 gravity to IBU threshold.  Doing that right is hard, and I wouldn’t say that this is perfect but it is certainly bitter and more so then I expected from them.

It comes in at 6.5% and 70 IBUs

Overall: B

Pro: Great head retention. Aroma, hop presence without tasting metallic or medicinal.

Con: It’s a bit one dimensional, it doesn’t have the nuance you find in a really great commercially distributed IPA like Stone or Racer 5.

Here is a clone:

5.5 gallon @ 75% efficency.

10lbs pale malt (2-row) (2 srm)

1lb Munich malt (9 srm)

1lb biscuit (23 srm)

.75 oz Chinook (13AA) 60 min

.50 oz Simcoe (13AA) 60 min

1.00 oz Simcoe 10 min

1.00 oz Cascade 10 min

2.00 oz Cascade dry hop in secondary (two weeks)

Mash at 148-150 for 60 minutes.

This beer had really neutral yeast component and a fairly thin mouth feel. I’d ferment low with WL california or Wyeast 1056. A German or Kolsch yeast would be interesting as well. Either way I’d cold condition for a while to get that clarity.

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By matticus, October 20, 2009 6:33 pm

Sierra Nevada probably is best known to us northwesterners as producing the pale ale  that saves that terrible corporate airport bar experience … you’ve said it too I know you have… “ahh they at least have Sierra Nevada Pale Ale”.

They probably get passed over by a lot of us beer nerds as a macro  sell out. While they are not exactly a small craft brewery they do manage to have a huge distribution and still retain the flavor and style that is lost by many to obtain market share.

I think they deserve credit for the quality beers they produce and their ability to do so on such scale. Seeing bigfoot or celebration show up in the store is always welcome.

They have just recently added to their normal lineup a proper IPA, and a fairly big one at that. I picked up a sixer of it recently and I like the niche. It is right in between a double or imperial IPA and your standard IPA, hence the extra title. I don’t find it to have a particularly stunning aroma or big hop flavor, but the bitterness is very present and balances out the fairly big malt profile. This is probably because it is shipped and shelved longer then something produced locally, but I find it very enjoyable and accessible big IPA.  It should also be noted that it can be found at a pretty good price point too, I picked up mine for $6.99 for six.

Here is my off the cuff attempt a clone:

5.5 gallon batch at 75% efficency.

1.072 OG/1.016 FG 7.2% ABV

I’d mash it at 150 and ferment in the mid 60s with a neutral ale yeast (white labs WL001 or wyeast 1056)

13lb 2 row

1lb crystal 60

.5lb crystal 20

1.25 oz magnum (12%aa) 60 minutes

1 oz magnum 15 minutes

1 oz crystal (3.5%aa) 15 minutes

1 oz crystal 5 minutes

1 oz crystal dry hop

1 oz magnum dry hop

Give it a try let me know if you do a side by side, or send me some and we can compare .