As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” So as the transitive property (yeah H.S. math) would suggest, this would also hold true with beer. Give a man a beer and you quench his thirst for an hour. Teach a man to brew his own beer and you pass on the home brewing bug and give the man the knowledge to quench his thirst for a lifetime!
After having attended a few Ferment the World homebrew meetings with my friend Bill, he expressed interest in brewing his first batch of beer. Having heard of the trials and tribulations, experiments, cool stuff you get to build and not to mention tasting fellow homebrewers great beers, Bill heard enough to want to begin brewing. We discussed possible recipes that he may like to brew and decided upon trying out a Black IPA. We chose this style for a few reasons; first Bill is a fan of IPAs (unlike myself) and I figured a darker well hopped beer may be more appropriate considering NJ’s recent frigid temperatures and barrage of snowstorms. Second, with all the hype/drama/discussion surrounding the Brewers Association style and terminology (Black IPA, Cascadian Dark Ale, American Style Black Ale) not to mention the outright popularity of these beers in 2010, I thought it would be exciting to try and create our own.
We scoured the internet for recipes, researched the field of commercially available Black IPAs and began constructing our recipe. We originally chose Maris Otter as our base malt but came to find that the homebrew supply store was all out so we swapped it for Muton’s Pale Malt. We added 1 lb of Munich Malt and 1 lb of Crystal Malt (40L) to add a bit of malty sweet flavor and help balance out the bitterness/darkness that we would get from the 0.5 lb Chocolate Malt and 0.5 lb Carafa III Special. This grain bill was intended to provide a nice dark (black) color without having too much of an overpowering roasted flavor. We wanted to accentuate the hops without covering them up with too much dark specialty malts.
As this is my first attempt at brewing an IPA, I was a bit inexperienced with selecting and using a large quantity of hops. We knew that we wanted a more fragrant less bitter beer and were looking to create a beer with more of a citrus/grapefruit/earthy characteristic. We originally selected Centennial, Cascade, Amarillo and Citra for our hops, however the brew store was all out of Amarillo so we added Sorachi Ace (U.S.) and Simcoe instead.
Brew day went well despite the 15°F weather. Bill was excited for his first brew day and was extremely helpful throughout the entire process. He asked questions, was conscientious of cleanliness and was a pleasure to teach how to brew. I had passed along articles and websites with basic information regarding brewing, ingredients, techniques and the like so he would be prepared with a basic understanding of the process. After reading the provided information, Bill was ready to brew but was still a bit unclear with certain aspects of the process. Honestly, there is no better way to learn some things then rolling up your sleeves and getting hands on, because throughout the process everything became much clearer for him. We enjoyed some previously homebrewed beers and planned our next beer, a robust vanilla porter.
Teaching someone to brew is really a great thing. It was the easiest way for Bill to fully comprehend the process and now I have someone to talk brewing with and collaborate with on future brews.
The “Black-eye PA” was quite good on Saturday night!
Thanks for the tasting! Looking forward to future samples.
[...] beer world might not be drowning in IBUs from so-called imperial pale ales (and their darker Cascadian relations who are sure to get an imperial prefix sooner or later) but there are certainly enough for the [...]