AG14 All Grain Black IPA - Black Dragon

I'm trying to get caught up with some brew day write ups to share so here's AG14, my first attempt at a controversially named Black IPA.

I've wanted to brew something using more American hops, this time to use up a bag of Cascade I've had for a while and some other odds and ends.

I ran this through qBrew an open source beer engine type brewing software for Linux.

Brewday 23rd April 2012

Target brew length: 20 litres
Target OG 1,074
Target FG 1,019
Target ABV 7.2%

Mash: 90 minutes
Boil: 90 minutes
Mash liquor: 15l
Total liquor: 35 (includes about 1.75l from the cold steep added to the boil)

Fermentables:
Pale malt (Maris Otter): 4.5kg
Munich Malt: 600g
Special B: 500g
Chocolate Malt: 100g
Pale Crystal: 250g
Torrified Wheat: 350g

Black malt: 500g cold steeped for 2 hours in 2 litres boiled and cooled water.

Note: Next time I'll use Carafa 3 as the finished brew did have slightly more roasted, burnt flavours than I'd wanted even with the cold steep of the back malt. I'll also use more hops.

Bittering Hops:
Target: 10g @ 90 mins - 9g @ 60mins
East Kent Golding: 11g @ 90 mins - 8g @ 60 mins
Northern Brewer: 5g @ 30 mins

Aroma Hops:
Cascade: 25g @ 10 mins - 32g @ flameout 80C steep for 30 mins

Cascade: 22g Dry hop added to secondary fermenter for 1 week before bottling.

Yeast:  Safale SO4 rehydrated and kicked of in a small starter of first run sweet wort boiled and cooled
Copper Finings: Protofloc - used a whole tablet as I wasn't impressed first time using just 1/4 tablet

The pics.

A bit of a grain user upper, Munich and Special B left over from AG13 Weissen

One of 2 carafes containing the cold steeped black malt extract

Adding hot liquor to the pre-heated mash tun

Doughing in

First runnings from the mash tun were pretty dark even before the cold steep was added.

Cold steeped black malt extract being added to the run off sweet wort before boiling.

Vigorous boil and the first bittering hops are in.

10 minutes from end of boil, chiller already in to sterilize in the boiling wort.

Lots of cold break crud settled on the base of the boiler as the hopped wort is run off to the fermenter

Pitching the SO4 starter @ 26C

The next morning. Water bath temp at 22C, hell of a fermentation

Crazy alien yeast head! It's Aliiiiiivvvvveeeee!!!!1!

I had to give the inside of the FV rim a good clean with a sterilized scraper before I could put the lid back on. It settled later that day but fermentation finally stopped around 1,022, 3 points above target FG.

I racked off to secondary and dry hopped for a week. Checking the gravity again before bottling and it was still at 1,022

I've calculated the finished beer to be 6.5% and it's tasting very good. As I wrote above though it does have a more burnt flavour than i was expecting so next time I'll definitely opt for the de-husked Carafa 3.

I'll try and get a decent photo of a pint of it this evening but I'm having a few blurry issues with my camera when it comes to photographing pints.