Cascadian Dark Ale

[Craigerrr]

Thank you, I was hoping someone would get the reference

 

[J A]

For hops, I checked and have not used _this batch_ of strata or mosaic with a darker beer, so I'm swapping them out.
now doing
60m cascade pellets.
10m Chinook and 10m cascade leaf hops
whirlpool 10: ~2 ounces cascade leaf and 1 ounce Columbus and 1 ounce of Chinook

The Chinook hops are different batches, one at 10 AA, another at 13.5

This has me at 57 IBU on a 1.060-ish beer.

I like this.
I think your dark roasts are somewhat over complicated and repetitive but it'll work. There are reasons to layer the roast flavors for complexity. I think I'd keep the Midnight Wheat and ditch the Blackprinz. You have 2 chocolates in the same 240 range but one is rye so maybe those will be distinct enough. When I'm trying to get really dark without too much burnt roast, I'll lean on the Pale Chocolate in the 220 to 240 range for rich flavor and a smaller percentage of Midnight Wheat for deep color. For simple dry stouts, I just rely on a lot of Roasted Barley in the 300 range.
Brew on! I'm interested to see how the simple hop combination works out.

 

[Dave Y]

I like this.
I think your dark roasts are somewhat over complicated and repetitive but it'll work. There are reasons to layer the roast flavors for complexity. I think I'd keep the Midnight Wheat and ditch the Blackprinz. You have 2 chocolates in the same 240 range but one is rye so maybe those will be distinct enough. When I'm trying to get really dark without too much burnt roast, I'll lean on the Pale Chocolate in the 220 to 240 range for rich flavor and a smaller percentage of Midnight Wheat for deep color. For simple dry stouts, I just rely on a lot of Roasted Barley in the 300 range.
Brew on! I'm interested to see how the simple hop combination works out.

This is a good point of discussion and great feedback. It's exactly why I posted it. For example, I hadn't considered Munich 2 in place of MO & victory or biscuit. Also the dark roast feedback, which made me think a bit more and then do some reading. Even though I've used all of these ingredients and some in combination.

Initially, I had provisioned equal amounts of chocolate and pale chocolate in higher quantity. I was cautioned about astringency, and I have some neighbors who are sensitive to this, so I reduced those and subbed in some midnight wheat in quantity enough to make it dark enough. I need to go back and look at the last one, but I know midnight wheat was in it.

I like the layered chocolate malts because IMO and a few others, the combination seems to bring more of the malt characteristic forward than using a higher quantity of a single one of them. I think much the same with crystal malts. Here, I want _some_ roastiness, but not at the level of a stout. I want some complexity from the dark roasts as well and I think the chocolate rye should be present and subtle.

I think if I were to design again from scratch I would probably secure the color with crystal and midnight wheat, then consider what complexity I may want.
Once again, I got really good results from my sparge today, I'm probably going to make a separate post for that.

It was another long mash today, despite having about less than half the rye content of my previous brew, the Roggenbier. I don't think I used enough rice hulls, but that's fixable.

 

[J A]

I like the layered chocolate malts because IMO and a few others, the combination seems to bring more of the malt characteristic forward than using a higher quantity of a single one of them. I think much the same with crystal malts. Here, I want _some_ roastiness, but not at the level of a stout. I want some complexity from the dark roasts as well and I think the chocolate rye should be present and subtle.

Yeah.. I like using a combo of roasts from 500L down to 200L in color. I think the flavors can tend to play well together and avoid the bland burnt flavor that can happen when you're just getting all your color from a single very dark malt or over-present coffee notes that can come from a larger quantity of lighter roast. I've taken to using predominately Pale Chocolate that's in the 220 range in combination with Midnight Wheat and that seems to work pretty well and keeps things fairly simple. When I need more dark malt flavor, I'll go to some C120 to add a dark fruit/molasses flavor.

For my "Black" IPA, I used a combination of C60, C90, Special B, Carafa II and Midnight Wheat. That seemed to cover a lot of ground in terms of interesting flavors and complex dark color.

 

[Craigerrr]

I have never used Rye in anything I have brewed, I had a "Rye IPA" once and didn't care for it at all.
I'm not messing with my "Black IPA" recipe, it is a winner. It is a recipe I actually found here on BF a number of years ago, and I don't think I have changed anything really. Except that initially I used dark Candi sugar, I swapped that out for a more economical and readily available simple sugar. I felt like I should comment more on my recipe, but it isn't really my recipe, I poached it

 

[J A]

I have never used Rye in anything I have brewed, I had a "Rye IPA" once and didn't care for it at all.
I'm not messing with my "Black IPA" recipe, it is a winner. It is a recipe I actually found here on BF a number of years ago, and I don't think I have changed anything really. Except that initially I used dark Candi sugar, I swapped that out for a more economical and readily available simple sugar. I felt like I should comment more on my recipe, but it isn't really my recipe, I poached it

I think my Black IPA is the only recipe I ever used Rye in. Fairly small quantity and it probably adds a little dimension to a fairly heavy beer. It's been forever since I brewed that beer. Our "winter" season is short and often pretty warm (except when it's briefly life-threateningly cold like this weekend). I don't end up brewing a lot of dark or heavy beers these days. More often the tap line is Lager, Golden ale, Pale, Irish Red (or Brown Ale, maybe Dark Lager) with the winter dark beer tap taken over by a Irish Dry Stout or American Amber.