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The Rare Barrel Dark Ale Recipe

If you liked The Rare Barrel’s Golden Ale and Red Ale recipes, check out this one for their Dark Ale.

May 30, 2017 - 3 min read

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In addition to sharing The Rare Barrel’s Golden Ale and Red Ale recipes, Jay Goodwin, cofounder and director of blending and brewing at The Rare Barrel in Berkeley, California, also shared with us this recipe for their Dark ale base beer, which is loosely based on the straight Oud Bruin style. We’ve scaled it to homebrew size. As this recipe is written, you can pitch any of the suggested mixed cultures into the primary fermentor and leave the beer to age from several months to a year or more.

An alternate approach is to ferment initially using a clean Saccharomyces strain such as Wyeast 1056, White Labs WLP001, or US-05, and then rack to secondary and add a strong mixed culture of Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. If you use this alternate method, Jay recommends mashing at 155°F (68°C) for an hour to ensure that enough residual sugars remain for the mixed culture to consume during aging.

You can use any low alpha acid hops because only a small quantity is needed—just enough to achieve one IBU or so.

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