Brewing Mother Night ASIBA

There are many reasons why the craft beer renaissance in the United States has been a good thing. Now celebrating over a quarter-century of producing artisanal ales and lagers, small American breweries have had a tremendous impact on the beer industry the world over. Having carved out a relatively tiny but comfortable share of the marketplace, they are now even applying considerable pressure on the macroswill peddlers; evidenced by the big boys various attempts to appear more like craft breweries either by clever labeling and marketing or simply acquiring smaller breweries.

Setting the good fight aside, another measure of American craft breweries global impact is the growing influence they exhibit on other parts of the brewing world. Belgians are making West Coast IPA’s, Germans and Scotsmen battling to steal the highest ABV crown from an American brewery; the list goes on. I believe this influence has its seed in the exuberance American brewers across the board have shown for gaining knowledge on many varying brewing techniques, their penchant for creativity and for artfully breaking rules handed down from more traditional brewing cultures.

That creativity has most recently brought on a wave of what have been called Black IPA’s or Cascadian Dark Ales but have now been officially named American-style India Black Ales (ASIBA). Essentially they can be characterized as hop monster imperial IPA’s with a small amount of the grain bill being filled by black or chocolate malts to add considerable color and hints of roasty or smoky flavors. Widmer’s W-10 Pitch Black and Deschutes Hop in the Dark are the two examples I have tasted but there are many more entrants to the party such as Barley Brown’s Turmoil and Hopwork’s Secession.

My homebrewing partner and I decided to get on the bandwagon and brew up a batch of Mother Night ASIBA. I wrote the recipe after doing some research into clone recipes of the above commercial examples and thinking about how to interpret the style to my own liking. Specialty grains beyond the darker grains were in order, so I concocted a grain bill that was complex but with the purpose of adding some mouthfeel and to add sweetness for balance. Wanting to highlight rounded bitter instead of smoky tones from the grains, I used more chocolate malt than black for color. A considerable amount of dry hops will be utilized in order to up the aroma to the point that it isn’t overshadowed by the roasted grains. I chose a yeast strain that accentuates the malty flavors for balance and finishes dry to bring out the hop bitterness. Not that it will need help in that department as my calculations found the estimated IBUs to be well over 100. Overall, I was going for a huge hop monster emphasizing flavor over bitterness that is only partially reined in by the bready sweet and roasty malts with a nice solid mouthfeel.

Carl and I got started early, despite him feeling slightly under the weather. We decided to move the brewing operation onto Carl’s covered patio with a cast iron propane stove so we took some time setting up stations for cleaning, staging and brewing and then getting acquainted with the operation of the stove. We measured out the many hop additions, put the ones for dry hopping back in the freezer and then mashed in when we knew we could comfortably control the temperature. I stirred the grains more often than I would for other batches due to the sheer amount of grains I was trying to float in the brew bag, eventually just holding the bag to maximize contact surface for all the grain. A little bit of fidgeting with the stove to keep the temperature in check was required but otherwise the mashing went smoothly. A good sparge and then a bit of a time getting up to boil (understandable when there is that much dense fluid) but we were adding the first hops in no time. More cleaning filled our time between hop additions; myself with the brewing paraphernalia and Carl with his baby. The boil went well and we resorted to the ice bath technique again to cool our wort but without problem.

Once we topped off the carboy with water, the temperature was perfect to pitch the yeast. However, a gravity reading confirmed what I had expected – we were over 1.070 and required a second vial of yeast to reach the proper pitching rate. We pitched the first vial and set the blow off tube, then finished cleaning. Carl was relieved to finally get some time to lie down in bed to fight his illness (although I did most of the beer work, if only to protect our precious liquid from his germs), and I made a trip to the homebrew shop. At my behest, Carl asked them if we would need two vials of yeast when he picked up the rest of the ingredients but they said we would be fine. Without rubbing that in their faces, I asked about pitching two vials hours apart and got some tips.

After some other errands and a break for dinner, I returned to Carl’s to rack the beer, making sure to aerate well as we went along and then pitched the second vial of yeast. Carl went promptly to bed and I left to enjoy a Bagombo IPA at my house. Quite a bit of work involved in making this beer stuff, but always worth the reward that the product of your labors embodies.