C to the D to the A

AKA Cascadian Dork Ale

There you have the M&A CDA, also known as Cascadian Dark Ale, aka Black IPA, aka American Dark Ale, aka kiss my a$$ all U haterZ!


Here's the recipe:
OG=1.070 (or 1.075, depending on which of my instruments is correct, the hydrometer or the refractometer)
FG=1.014
ABV=7.3% (or more if the OG is 1.075, anyways, a 'winter warmer' for sure)
IBU=98 (Can u say bitter?)
SRM=black

• 2.4 kg Crisp Pale Ale malt
• 600 g Baird Maris Otter
• 250 g Carafa II
• 69 g CaraAroma
• 75 g Crystal 150L
• 12 g Chinook hops (11.5% AA) @ FWH
• 14 g Chinook @ 60 min
• 28 g Chinook @ 15 min
• 20 g Glacier (5% AA) @ 10 min
• 10 g Glacier @ 0 min
• 16 g Centennial (8.3% AA) @ 0 min
• 20 g Centennial @ DH (6 days)
• Yeast=+/- 500ml third gen repitch WLP001 California Ale Yeast

Notes on this bad muthuh:

I mixed in the dark malts (all but the first 2) at the end of the mash/beginning of the sparge, per advice from other brewers, to reduce acridity or possible tannin extraction that can happen when mashing dark malts for longer times. I boiled for 90 min, which I'm doing for all of my bigger brews now, basically anything over 1.056--a number I pretty much arbitrarily decided upon. Or read somewhere. Can't remember which. What I hope to get out of the longer boil is a slight carmelization of the malts (60 min is 'standard' for home brewers).


As for hops I'm doing first wort hops on these bigger brews this winter, having heard it further reduces acrid or sharp bitterness, though now I'm learning that water chemistry also plays a part in that so this is an ongoing area of enquiry and experimentation. I fermed a little warmer, at around 19C for most of it, (hoping to get some residual sweetness to round off the expected intense bitterness), ramping up to 22 for the finishing cleanup, before cold crashing a few days to drop as much of the weaker yeast cells out as I could. Altogether it was 10 days in primary, then racked to secondary for 12 days, the last 6 of which it sat with the 20g of Centennial dry hops. All hops were whole leaf. It's bottle conditioned for about 10 days now, so... Let's try this pig.


Appearance:  For starters, it's black. Almost no light gets through. I was specifically hoping for a 'true' black, not the brown or red black you get with porters and stouts. For this style to stand up on it's own, IMHO, that's one of the criteria. Of course it's not actually black, as you can see in the photo, there is a bit of a warm halo when you hold it up to a light. But the regular appearance is a cold black, rather than a warm one, which I think a proper CDA should have. The head also, while being a foamy, off-white or bone color, is not of the warm persuasion. This is good, in my opinion. The head is thick and sudsy, but varies from bottle to bottle. This is a bottling flaw; I used manufactured priming drops (which were old and most likely funky, something I didn't really think about at the time) rather than DME to prime this beer. I knew one drop per 500ml bottle wouldn't be sufficient, but it seems two is too much. What's more, there seems to be inconsistency from bottle to bottle. Note to self: No more iffy bottle priming short-cuts.


Aroma:  The strong Centennial dry hops mingle very nicely with the equally forward smoky/roasty malt aroma. Spot on. (pat-pat on the back)


Flavor:  Malty, roasty, a bit smoky (how'd that happen?) and really hoppy both in background bitterness and forward hop flavor as well. Those 98 IBUs linger on the tongue for sure, but it all holds together quite well and I'm pretty happy with this first attempt at such a brewer's juggling act, i.e. a big, hoppy, roasty, warming brew. I don't know if I 'nailed it' or not, as this is still a pretty new style and I don't know what's technically 'right', but I'm pleased with what I got. It seems distinct to me from porters and stouts, which seem to bring more coffee/chocolatey notes to the fore, while still keeping those in the repertoire. And it's definitely not just an IPA.


Mouthfeel: This first attempt is plenty big, and sudsy carb issues notwithstanding, I can't complain. The big bitterness does leave an unpleasant film in the mouth long after imbibing, though. I think a CDA should be fairly big, but next time I will probably bring the gravity down from the low 70s to the high 60s for drinkability's sake.

I've only had a few so-called Black IPAs or CDAs, and most of them were either indistinguishable from big IPAs, like if you closed your eyes you wouldn't know, which to me is like, then why bother making it black other than to just be a hipster? Or they were big and porter-like, and I'm saying yo, just make a porter already. And I'm not really that interested in porters.

So I was interested in the debate over this style, and to see what I could do with the style or bring to the debate to clarify it, at least for myself, and I think I have. Also, being from the Northwest I felt an obligation to try my hand at it, but really it was the brewing challenge it presented that made this so attractive. It widens the space between porters and IPAs, knocks some of the sweetness back with bitterness, shakes up the malt bill with some complexity...and just makes a pretty rock solid new style.

And that's the final analysis.

Ed: The official name for this new style is 'American-style Black Ale'. But I think that name lacks a certain--je ne sais quoi--balls?