|BACKGROUND|

Finally, getting back to my roots of truly doing some real weird shit.

Although, at the same point, this does fall back onto one of my previous posts about getting brainraped because, once again Tired Hands did an IPA with astronaut ice cream too (but they used sandwiches and I thought my beer was streets ahead of theirs). They released it 3 days after I brewed mine, although I wrote my recipe for it last year. A little hard to keep chalking these things up to just Theory of Multiple Discovery if it happens a few more times.

But, my idea was to get a black IPA as dark as possible and with little to no roast. From that, the secret ingredients of choice are de-bittered Carafa III and Midnight Wheat. If you aren’t familiar with these sleeper grains, I recommend you get acquainted.

Initially, the idea stemmed from trying to make a beer that referenced the Gospel album of the same name, hence where the idea for astronaut ice cream actually came from. If anything, it seems that I’m currently on a tear of brewing music inspired beers at the moment. (Note: it was also the first song I added to the I Brew Weird Shit Official Spotify Playlist™)

Throwing it back to my old milkshake IPA recipe, with a few extra twists, we ended up here.

Them Digits

Batch Size: 5.5 gallons

Mash Temp: 148F for 60 min.

Boil Time: 60 min.

Batch Efficiency: 66%

Original Gravity: 1.076 // 18.4 P

Final Gravity: 1.018 // 4.6 P

Estimated ABV: 7.8%

IBUs: 80

Color: 82 EBC // 42 SRM

Recipe

Malts

10# Pearl | 59%

3# Red Wheat | 18%

2# Malted Oats | 12%

.75 Carafa III |4%

.5# Midnight Wheat | 3%

.5# Lactose | 3%

.125# Turbinado | 1%

Hops

2 oz. Palisade @ 60 min. | 47 IBU

1 oz. Mosaic @ 15 min. | 20 IBU

1 oz. Meridian @ 10 min. | 8 IBU

1 oz. Mosaic @ 5 min. | 7 IBU

1 oz. Mosiac CRYO, 2 oz. Belma, 2 oz. Meridian @ 170F Hop steep, 10 minutes | 0 IBU

.5 oz Mosaic Cryo, 1 oz. Belma, 1 oz. Meridian @ Dryhop (x2, 3 days contact each)

Yeast

Wyeast 1318 (London III) fermented @ 68-70F

Water Shit

4 mL 88% Lactic Acid

2 tsp Calcium Chloride

Spices and Stuff

1# Fresh Strawberries (marinated in 1/4 cup sugar)

2 oz. Cacao nibs (soaked in vodka, added post-ferm, 3 days)

1.5 Vanilla Beans (soaked in vodka, added post-ferm, 3 days)

4 bars Neopolitan Astronaut Ice Cream (during boil)

|BREW LOG|

On the same day of brewing the Luck o’ the Irish, I went 2 for 2 on putting weird shit in the boil that probably has no place being there.

Started off normal enough. Weighed and milled out the grains, heated the water up to strike temp, added the lactic acid and CaCl to the water, mashed in as usual. I hate writing this part because there’s not exactly a whole lot I can do to zazz it up unless I’m doing something weird with the mash or something goes horribly, terribly wrong. Can’t really complain when you hit the numbers pretty much on the head, though.

While the mash was going on, though, I snuck upstairs to do some other prep work. In previous beers (well, one) that I used strawberries, I didn’t get as much of that strawberry flavor as I was looking for. I chalked that up to the fact that I had kinda boiled the piss out of them to try and breakdown the rhubarb. This time, I took a slightly different approach. Typically when I make strawberries for dessert, I just slice ’em, sprinkle a little sugar on top, give ’em a stir, and then let them chill in the fridge for an hour or two. The sugar draws a little bit of the juice out of the berries and you end up with a super tasty strawberry syrup (pro-tip: makes the best strawberry milk ever). This also seems to slightly amplify the strawberry flavors as well, so I figured why not give it a try in this too.

Just cut Post sugar soak

I gave them some time to stew in their own juices before I popped them on the stove. Bringing them up to 180F for a quick hold to sanitize before popping on a lid to let the cool back down.

By that point, it was time to collect first running. I have some confidence in my ability as a brewer at this point, so I knew my beer was gonna be dark but… I honestly was surprised by just how dark it was. Considering that I had just brewed an imperial stout, this was pretty identical, despite using a fraction of the roasted/dark grains. Not that I was mad, the goal was maximum dark and minimum roast. Cue finger lick and air tally.

I managed to collect about 2.5 gallons of first runnings before it was time to batch sparge. Just trying to get rid of them, as well as being aware of the fact that adding dark grains on top of the bed while sparging without extracting roastiness, I tossed a handful (about a 1/2 pound, I have some goddamn mitts) of dark roasted rice atop the bed before adding in the hot liquor. Coming back after another 10 minute rest, the second runnings did have a nice, darker color to them, with the bonus of no astringency or extra bitterness. Plus, I got to use up some free grains that I never use as well. All in all, ended up with a little over 7 gallons in the kettle.

Cue the boil. Start off with a little bit of FermCap to prevent a boil over as much as possible and we’re in the thick of it. There’s a large break in the hop additions, but the actual recipe I had written called for a pen of hop extract, which it turned out I did not have despite telling myself that it had to be somewhere. So, adapt, improvise, overcome. 2 oz. of Palisade hops that I had got my right about in the 50 IBU ballpark I was looking for anyways. Around 30 minutes in was when I decided it was time to get weird.

Admittedly, I was initially planning to use 5 bars of astronaut ice cream. It was a favorite treat of mine to get from the science store at the mall as a kid. As an adult, I partook a bit to hard of the devil’s lettuce and, under the influence and craving non-existent snackies in my apartment, I caved, eating one of the packs. I justified it to myself as “quality control”, but to be fair, it was just a lack of self control. I crumbled them up lightly and just dropped them right in the pot.

They took a little more time to breakdown than the knock-off Lucky Charms marshmallows, but eventually they did.

Finishing out the rest of the boil, I didn’t add any WhirlFloc or other clarifying agents, since I was shooting for the milkshake/NEIPA. Finally getting to the cool down phase after a light bit of hop bursting, I used my pump/chiller combo to knock out to 170F before adding the hops for a 10 minute steep, opting to put the lid on top to hold in some more of the flavors and aromas.

After the little soak, I continued chilling the wort down to 68F. Since the strawberries were cooled enough, I added them directly to the carboy, much like I do with my fruited sours. I racked the wort on top of them, collecting about 5.5 gallons. I hit it with 60 seconds of pure oxygen and pitched my pack of yeast on top before putting the baby in the corner (even though nobody puts baby in the corner).

Taking a reading of the wort pre-ferm, it came in slightly lower than I would have hoped, but still well within the realm of what I deemed acceptable, clocking in at 1.074 before adding in the 1/4 of sugar with the strawberries. So, call it 1.076 SG.

After 2 weeks of fermenting, we had a solidified bottling date, so the first depth charge of dank went into the carboy. 3 days in a nylon sack with some sanitized marbles and the first round was pulled out. The second round was the same blend of hops, however this addition also saw the vanilla beans and cacao nibs in the bag as well, another 3 days of contact.

At bottling, we collected about 4.75 gallons of beer, which was a little lower than expected, but this is what happens when you DDH. At the same time, I was slightly nervous because, while it wasn’t orange juice, the beer was still a bit on the hazy side. Since the physical matter in suspension does lighten the beer’s color, we were looking at a kinda poo/chocolate color hazy black IPA. Which, I guess I could have dealt with, but I was hopeful that it’d settle out a little bit and get back to the super dark porter coloration I had initially.

I was also a bit shocked with the fact that the beer finished, what I’d consider, high. I had mashed low and slow, but up on the measurement at bottling, the beer was sitting comfortably at 1.018! Even if I tried to account for the fact that the astronaut ice cream may have added some other non-fermentables and extra lactose dosing, I was now slightly apprehensive about bottling, but the shark had been jumped. The woes of not being able to constantly check gravity readings. On the other hand, there had been 0 airlock activity for about a week.

I made a simple syrup with 1/2 cup table sugar (3.66 oz) and a cup of water as a priming solution. Mixing that into the beer, we ended up with a little shy of two cases, also including a few bombers and 750 ml’s into the mix. From there, it was a simple point of waiting and checking to make sure things weren’t carbing too much. (Note: Now that the entire batch is gone, I can safely say there were 0 bottle bombs and the beer just finished high, for some reason)

Tasting Notes

Right off the bat, this beer pours an inky chocolate that turns to black the more the glass fills up. It throws a slightly offwhite head, but decidedly light for what it looks like the beer should be capped with. It retained some of that fomay goodness for a solid few minutes while I was shooting photos for the blog too. While drinking, the beer laces out harder than Ace Ventura: Pet Detective references. Despite not using clarifying agents, the beer actually settled out nicely into a non-hazy opaqueness. While I would have accepted a poop/chocolate haze monster, I’m honestly pleased that it isn’t that color. Despite the fact that it was also double dryhopped, the haze is non-existant.

The nose on the beer is what you’d expect from a black IPA. Decidedly Mosaic forward, with some citrus and pine at the tail, mellowing in a fruity cornucopia of love with a hint of malt.

But the flavor. Dear god. This beer is arguably one of the best that I’ve brewed to date. That’s not even just my opinion on it either, numerous others have the exact sentiment. At the first sip, all you taste initially is strawberries, and a metric fuckton of them. At the second wave of flavors in the middle of the palate, you get the pine and the chocolate, which sounds like an absolutely mess of a combo, but it works. Finally, at the end after you swallow, a light bitterness dances at the back of the mouth while a hint of roast and vanilla stand up like the captain of the titanic going down with the ship. This is a goddamn roller coaster of flavors, only made better by the fact that this bitch looks like a basic English porter and you’d never see it coming. It’s got all the right tones of a NEIPA and then some. The malt backbone stops shy of something like FSW Double Jack cloying-ness, and I think it helps balance out the actually bitterness, leading the perceived bitterness to be a bit lower.

The mouthfeel is superb. The carbonation level was just where it needed to be and, combined with the high protein grist, the lactose, and the slightly high finishing gravity, it’s well rounded and chewy like a NEIPA should be. I was worried that, finishing so high, the beer would be a syrupy sweet mess but… it’s not. It’s perceptibly sweet, yes, but I think the vanilla and berries drive that. While the beer is decidedly not dry, it’s not slick or oily either. Supple is the word that comes to mind.

In the end, this beer is a miracle. I’m probably never going to be able to make another one that tastes as good as this batch does. But hey, I did some real weird shit with this batch of beer and I can only be extremely pleased that it turned out the way that it did. Somehow, everything was balanced and all the pieces of the puzzled fell into place almost perfectly enough that I can here that little Legend of Zelda chime from solving a temple’s trick.