The Imperial Blackness Is A Winner

Black IPA

Some people don't believe in mixing roasted malts with a lot of hops. I don't have any such prohibitions and as a matter of fact, I think I just knocked the Rye IPA out of my top favorite slot.

You can see one of my new Ikea quart bottles. I think I will convert to entire fleet over to this stopper type because having quart bottles in the fridge is a cool thing.

Rinse

Regarding the Hops: This time I strained most of the the hops from reaching the primary because I had two pretty good high alpha varieties and I didn't want to go too hoppy. A lot of the small stuff made it through the strainer but I would say 50% was leafy and so it didn't make it to the primary.

When I tasted this one at week one  knew I had a winner although with all the yeast in there it was hard to tell what was going on with the three layers of roasted barley and wheat. Now that the bare minimum time has past I can tell this one is really something. The spray malt has made this very sweet and would be  likely to continue to ferment if I didn't drink it all before it could reach perfection. The high alcohol content is noticeable I would guess it's at 8% and will go higher at time passes.

I think my next round will be minus the 3 lbs of spray malt and maybe use 14 lbs of 2 row. Every thing else can be the same assuming hops are available.