#bipa

Jinu's instrument is making a comeback

Brewday - Imperial Black Rye IPA (Sirius Black)

Been awhile since I brewed a BIPA, not fully nailed the style down yet, so when I tried Alec’s Black Rye at homebrew club last year I had to get the recipe off him as it was superb. With a little persuasion he was forthcoming, and of course I used his as a basis for mine with quite a bit of modification so it’s kind of become more of an inspired by rather than a full clone. I swapped out a lot of the rye as I didn’t want to to be quite so forthcoming so the malt bill turned out with 59.5% Pale, 12.5% Pilsner, 6.25% Cara Rye, 12.5% Rye, 4.17% Midnight Wheat, 08.3% Roasted Barley and 4.25% Briess Extra Special Malt.

Initially I though the midnight wheat wasn't going to colour it dark enough, a mistake I made with my last BIPA, but I’d used 100g more this time and added some Roasted Barley, that was because I didn’t have quite as much of the midnight wheat left as I originally thought, so made up the difference with that. I know originally that BIPAs were more about colour than the flavour of the dark malts, but I love that roasty addition to a big hoppy beer, which was why I went with these dark malts instead of something like Carafa III. I love midnight wheat, it’s dehusked so you get all the great roasty flavours without any astringency.

I matched Alec’s hop schedule, but cut back by 100g, mainly due to the cost of Centennial and Cascade. I split 200g over the boil with 30g of each left for dry hopping. I used pellets as they’ve started to grow on me for ease of brewing and I’ve yet to tell any difference between pellet and leaf. The only problem is that the hop sludge blocks up my hop filter but this was easily fixed by the application of a low tech solution. I just poured the last bit into a sieve. Worked fine. Probably got more wort out that way than I would have with leaf soaking it all up. This will be the first time I’ve dry hopped with pellet so will see how that goes, guess I dont really need to worry about clarity with a BIPA though, lol.

So I’ve pitched the trusty SafeAle05 wrapped a blanket round the FV and put my fairy lights on in my insulated brew cupboard, low tech all the way! I’ll add the dry hops after 7 days for about 5 then bottle and report back.

OG is 1.062, not a massive ABV, but I’m happy with that. Alec’s was over 7% and that’s just a bit too much for me, 5.6%ish should do nicely.