A Beautiful Day (or 2) for Black IPA: 12/31 (& 1/1)

Sunrise 12/31/10: Driving to GHBC 6:30 am

The last brew of 2010 and the first of 2011 were batch 1 and 2 of our new Black IPA, the first beer in our yet-to-be-named hoppy beer series (any suggestions???).

After tasting a bunch of other commercial examples and consulting the style guidelines we settled on a simple malt bill of primarily Pils Malt, some Caramalt for body, and just enough Black Malt for color.  Although black in color we really wanted to highlight the hops.  Rather than brewing a hopped-up Porter, which could be interesting with all of its hoppy-roasty-goodness, for this one we really wanted to make it a big black IPA.  No Dark Crystal Malts, no Chocolate Malt, and no Roasted Barley in this beer.

For hops we decided on a robust blend of Citra and Warrior, for all kettle additions.  Dry-hop additions will be decided later next week.

Weighing in with an OG of around 17 Plato (1.070) it should finish around 7% abv.