Black IPAs

Black pale ale: dark forces rising

This counterintuitive beer has provided some of 2012's most exciting drinking. Have you tried it, and might darker beers make a popular comeback?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/nov/13/black-pale-ale-dark-forces-rising 

In the fast-moving world of craft beer, it is almost impossible to keep track of what's hot or not, new or last week's thing. And why bother? Only a fool would drink a beer because it is fashionable. But as we begin to review the year, there is no doubt in my mind which beer style has emerged as 2012's big revelation: the black IPA.

It is a hybrid mired in controversy, dismissed variously as an oxymoron (like that matters), a gimmick, and indistinguishable from pre-existing porters. If, however, in the US, where the black IPA originates, some brewers faddishly created beers that were more about colour than flavour, that is not how the style has been interpreted here. 

Towards the back end of 2011, this counterintuitive brew (easily categorised and identified as a great upfront wallop of tropically fruity and acutely bitter hop flavours underpinned by the smokier, roasted malt character of a stout), caught the imagination of Britain's sharpest craftbrewers, and through 2012 it has produced some of the year's mostexciting drinking. Last month, Thornbridge's Raven, which has recently appeared on sale in Waitrose, took the category gold at the World Beer Awards.

Brewdog's 7% Libertine Black Ale is a creditable version (if you can get past the bizarre label copy), while Magic Rock's 8 Ball is interesting, in that, unusually, it puts stout flavours front and centre, in the form of a prominent cluster of black coffee, treacly, dark berry notes.

Personally, though, my favourite UK version is Kernel's. On first contact it is typically bold and hoppy, a great gobful of citrus, pineapple and grapefruit flavours, but it is a subtle, well-crafted beer. As the fruitiness falls away, the smokiness of the stout elides with the hops to produce an unusually rounded and long bitterness. At first, the stout seem to be more of an aftertaste than anything, warm fumes wafting about in your head. But, the more you drink, the more that anchor of stout flavours - on an arc from dark caramel to tobacco - comes through, adding a depth and fullness to a beer which, whatever it is, is packed with character. It is a quite remarkable example of flavours you wouldn't expect to work interlocking in sweet harmony.

All of which would be but a minor shockwave amid the thunderous explosion of craft beer creativity if the black IPA didn't hint at a further tantalising possibility. Could it turn a hitherto agnostic drinkers on to darker beer styles? Certain beers are "gateway" beers. Lager drinkers making their first foray into real ale will, almost invariably, start drinking crisp pale ales. Likewise, those of us who love brash, hoppy IPAs (cue harrumphing below-the-line at this crass, flashy beer style) are far more likely to come to appreciate stouts via black IPAs rather than someone simply plonking a pint of porter in front of us.

Is drinking ever-darker beers an inevitable progression for all real ale drinkers? Perhaps. For those who have gravitated to real ale from lager it seems common. The longer you drink, the more beer styles you try, and the more you come to appreciate that there is life beyond golden ales. For instance, it is easy to slag off traditional English bitter as a fusty, boring beer style, and 99 times out of 100 it is. But you need only drink Marble's Best or Grain brewery's bitter (both vibrant and precise in their flavours) to realise that actually there are no "bad" beer styles, just a lot of big operators brewing middling, piddling versions of such.

I'm not sure that I'm quite ready to give up a big hop hit in my pint, but the black IPA has certainly made me keener to dip into dark milds, stouts and porters. Beer styles which, unlike neglected best bitter, are rife withchange and innovation. It shouldn't be hard, therefore, to find plenty of dark beers which offer a vivid, unapologetic flavour profile. Word of Mouth regulars, when going dark, what do you recommend?