It’s that time of the year again when I brew my magickal ale with everything 1’s. It’s OG 1111, 11%ABV, 111 IBU… Shut up and drink it!
It’s Chocolate dinkel malt, crystal malt, caramel malt, pale malt and rye malt.
It’s Belma hops, Centennial hops, Chinook hops, and Columbus hops.
It’s not an IPA.
It’s not a Stout.
It’s a well hopped black ale. Some call them CDA (Cascadian Dark Ale), I’m not in or from Cascadia, I’m not partiulary influenced by those. I’m not sure if I came up with this before I heard of them, but who cares.
It’s not an Black IPA, that just sounds stupid and I don’t condone that style name. Some say IBA (India Black Ale), I might sign on to that, but I’d like to promote yet another name…
HBA (Hoppy Black Ale)
A black ale which is just as hoppy as an American IPA. It should not get too much of the roasty tones as a stout, it should be hidden under the hops, it might come out as an after taste. But the hops should rule!
When the clock shows 11:11 make a wish and toast this beer and your wishes will come true, it will work best if you just happen to look at the clock. It doesn’t work if you set the alarm clock or wait for the clock, it should be by “luck” or instinct, then it works.
My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My color is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory for them that love me. Liber Al I:60
Today is the last binary day 11/11/11 (if you omit the first number of 2011) for a very long time. And I’m making a magickal beer kranked up to 11. It’s a black hoppy ale. I’m aiming for OG1111, 11 %ABV, 111 IBU with 11 hops. Dry hopped 11 times.
Last Friday I was at the 20’th annual Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival. I have only visited the last three ones, over all I think last year was better beers. Maybe because I got higher expectations now. I sampled 38 different beers this time, most of the beers was drinkable, some was good and very few if any was excellent.
You can see the whole list I tried on Untappd (I’m not sure how you can search?), I filled them out the day after because the app didn’t work that well after my first check in.
The first beer I wanted was the unpasteurized beer from Urquell, it was served from a 2700 liter barrel (seen on the picture here). However I overheard the bartender say it only contained 600 liters. They won’t serve from it the second week, so if you didn’t try it you missed it. If you ask me you didn’t miss that much. My friend said he had this same beer at the Soldaten Svejk pub the other day, so you can find it if you really want it I guess. This type of beer is not really my favourite. I sampled two more from Urquell, the best one was the Master Dark, pretty chocolately and lean schwarzbier.
Then we went directly to the hard stuff, and pretty much did that the rest of the day/evening. I’m gonna give a few comments of the ones worth mentioning here in no particular order…
Weisse Arne from the Worlds Smallest Brewery was a very good weissbier, I could have hade pints of this. Weissbier is sometimes a little bit sour, this one wasn’t and I liked it very much. It would be a very good session beer. As to being a small brewery they explained that it is the chef making the beer in a 0.96 kvm (10.33 ft2) part of his kitchen.
There is a new brewery in Stockholm called Södra Malfabriken, I tried their IPA’s and didn’t like it very much, it was ok-beer but not more. It will be interesting to see if they can do something better in the future.
Sigtuna Brygghus had a new version of Ace Of Spades, this year it was an Imperial IPA. I was a bit disappointed. It didn’t have very much aroma, if it was aged for a long time it could be explained, but I thought it would probably be much better after six more months. Then it would rather be a barleywine, right? I’m sure Lemmy would not approve it ;-). I didn’t sample anything else from them (nothing new for me this time).
Oppigårds had a Hop Rocket (I want one!) connected to their Golden Ale this day. I forgot to ask which hops it was, but with the hop rocket I think the Golden Ale was lot more tasty and refreshing than the ordinary one. I also tasted their Ekporter, very nice.
Jämtlands Bryggeri had a Black IPA, I was disappointed! It was rather like a black English type of ale, it was not what I expected.
Eskilstuna Ölkultur had many good beers and nice guys working behind the bar.
Then I had some new from last years favourites, Djaevlebryg. Old Mephisto brewed 2008 and aged until now, it got gold last year? Gudelös and Dark Beast was also very good.
Amager’s Black IPA was pretty good, it is a good brewery. Since Black IPA is my favourite category and I make ones myself I have pretty solid idea of how a black IPA should be. And I have only tasted one or two black IPA’s (ever) that can compare to the ones I make. Also their Rated XXX would be worth mentioning.
A “industrial brewery” that doesn’t need SEO help celebrated a 175 year old porter by making it a little special by increasing the alcohol level and oak age it. I didn’t really buy the three fermenting stages they did with this beer, I simply believe the yeast did not simply do the job very quickly, and when you add something with sugar it will keep on eating and farting out alcohol no matter what you do in the process. But the girl behind the bar was nice, and this was the only place that gave us cheese with the beer samples, that is the reason I even brought this beer up :-).
To sum up this article, I tasted 38 different beers this day/evening (I got home before 22:00), my alcohol level was around 1.50‰ when I left.
There is one more weekend, maybe I’ll go again if someone want me to join. I tried most of the beers I wanted, but there is 20-30 more yellow tagged beers I didn’t try. Mostly bottles that shouldn’t be to difficult to run into in the future anyway.
Last Friday I made a new batch of my Ninja IBA, something like the SM beer I made a couple of months ago, but stronger ABV and more hops, estimated 11% ABV and 130 IBU. I didn’t use the same hops as before because… I used up what I had in stock. What you don’t see on the picture is that I also had 40 gr Centennial the last minute. Everything went well, and the fermentation started in just a few hours. It’s cold in my apartment at the moment which is good fermentation temperature (17-20 C).
Edit 2011-07-03: I dry hopped with 100 gr of Galaxy hops, bottling will be on Wednesday.
I also tasted the CCCP and wow the coconut taste was awesome. I think I will remove the coconut today and bottle the brew on Thursday or Friday. I have high hopes for this brew.
It’s Chocolate dinkel malt, crystal malt, caramel malt, pale malt and rye malt. 
