Last year, the Harvest Black IPA was an all-Cascade affair (link), brewed with wet hops from my friend Bill. I ended up making two batches of that one and they were well received, which is why I used the recipe again. Bill recently told me that he has saved enough Cascade in the freezer that I can brew a couple of more batches.
In addition to Bill's Cascades, I have in mind to brew two versions of this beer from the 2015 Hawksbill Hop Yards harvest: first, a brew based on the combined flavors of CTZ and Cascade; and second, one that will feature a Chinook and Cascade combination. To add some complexity to the first batch, I dry-hopped with two ounces of Cascade during secondary fermentation.
The recipe was derived from the Northern Brewer "Ace of Spades" extract kit, only now I order the ingredients separately and combine them in the necessary quantities for the beer. In this case, I brewed on August 14th, and set the beer up to ferment with 1.068 O.G. - and ended up on September 25 with 1.014 F.G., for an ABV of 7.2%.
For the hops additions, here is the schedule I used on brew day:
- 60 minutes - 1 oz. CTZ
- 45 minutes - 1 oz. CTZ
- 30 minutes - 1 oz. Cascade
- 15 minutes - 1 oz. Cascade
- 5 minutes - 2 oz. Cascade
- Secondary dry hop - 2 oz. Cascade
You can surmise that I was after a decent IBU kick (the IBU calculator I used says 88 IBU, based on alphas of 13.23% and 6.65% on the CTZ and Cascade, respectively), but also wanted to be sure you got a punch in the face from Cascade aroma, thus the dry hop. There is a lot of dark, sweet malt in this to balance those hops.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this beer is after it bottle conditions for a couple of weeks...
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