Brew day – Black Mamba Rye IPA
One week after the Iron Brewer Challenge it is time for another brew-day – this time without weird adjuncts. On today’s menu is the Black Mamba Rye IPA – a bold, strong black IPA featuring a hefty dose of rye malt and the crispness that brings to a beer. In addition, todays brew sees the end of the Cascade hops (about 1oz) that I grew last summer. Indeed, this beer is a celebration of Cascade – other than a bit of Warrior for bittering & a touch of a late addition, all of the hop flavour and aroma will be from Cascade.
This recipe is largely one of my creation and is meant to be simple – the classical Black IPA grains of Victory malt (or Special malt; I have victory on-hand), dehusked dark malt (Carafa Special II), mixed with a 2.5:1 mix of pale malt and rye; typical of many rye-based beers. The mash is low-and-slow, to give a dry-finishing beer. With the rye this may lead to a too-dry finish, but I have taken two steps to balance that out – I hope. The first is relying on cascade as a hop – it should give a spicy/citrusy character that will provide a balancing fruitness to the beer. I am then accentuating that using the legendary Conan yeast, which should provide some additional fruity esters – notably apricot – to further balance the crispness of the rye and the highly fermentable wort.
Recipe & brew-day notes below the fold
The Recipe:
| Black Mamba IPA |
| American IPA (Black) |
| Type: All Grain | Date: 30 Mar 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 l | Boil Size: 30.27 l | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Boil Time: 75 min | End of Boil Volume 23.40 l | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ingredients | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Beer Profile | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Est Original Gravity: 1.074 SG | Measured Original Gravity: 1.059 SG | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Est Final Gravity: 1.009 SG | Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 8.6 % | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bitterness: 59.0 IBUs | Est Color: 29.6 SRM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mash Profile | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge | Total Grain Weight: 7.40 kg | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sparge Water: 18.38 l | Grain Temperature: 18.0 C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C | Tun Temperature: 18.0 C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 2 steps (3.12l, 15.26l) of 75.6 C water | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Carbonation and Storage | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Carbonation Type: Keg | Volumes of CO2: 2.3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Created with BeerSmith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brew-day Notes:
- Mashed in dead-on 65C. Because its a cooler day I wrapped a hammock and jacket around my MLT to keep the heat in. Temperature cooled less than half a degree over this time, despite the below-freezing weather! Conversion tested as complete at the 1 hour mark, but I mashed an additional 15 minutes to ensure a highly fermentable wort.
- Added ~5L of water at boiling to mash-out, then collected the first batch sparge. This was followed by a second 13L batch sparge at 75C. Pre-boil gravity was 1.053; slightly lower than the expected 1.055, but I also appear to have an extra litre of wort or so, perhaps accounting for the difference.
- All pellet hop additions were done using my new hop-spider, but the whole hops were added directly into the copper.
- I ended up missing my OG by quite a bit – I only got 1.059 where I was expecting something around 1.070. I suspect it may have been the rye – its kernels are smaller than barley, so it may have crushed poorly. This means this beer may taste more bitter than planned, although it should still be well within style.
I got 80% attenuation, which seems to be pretty typical for conan unless people are using a super-low mash temp &/or sugar.
I mill my rye twice. Once by itself, then I toss it in with the rest of the grains to be milled. My efficiency doesn't change much when I do this (even @ 40% rye). Did Conan attenuate fully for you? I only hit about 75% ADT with my Pale Wheat. Not bad, but I was expecting more of a monster…
I haven't used much rye but for my last brew (40% rye and wheat Brett beer) we did set the rollers a bit tighter for the wheat and rye, and hit our expected OG dead on. However, we were on the brink of a stuck sparge (even though we used rice hulls) so I'll probably deal with the hit on gravity and mill normally if I'm not using rye in a BIAB batch.
Cool! In your experience, does rye need a smaller roller gap? I'm still a little lost as to why my OG was so much lower than expected. The only other thing I can think of is that I may have mis-measured my grain. I can only measure a few kg at a time, so it is perfectly conceivable that I mis-measured the base malt…
I can assert that Conan plays nice with rye: my first brew with it was a red rye pale ale. Between the yeast and the rye you'll probably get incredible head retention!