Black IPA – The Barley Whine

In 2014 the BJCP announced their first update in four years. It brought the elimination and addition of many styles, including full representation of a number of IPA variants, with black IPA and rye IPA coming out of the specialty category. Right on queue, Founders chose early 2015 to bring back their short lived 2006 dark rye IPA known simply as Founders Black Rye. While it doesn’t fit perfectly in either style, the beer is an interesting hybrid of the two.

Founders Black Rye

THE BEER

At first glance what we have here is a stout, or porter. Getting anywhere close however lets your olfactory sense know this a different creature. A Cascadian dark or black pale ale perhaps? No, there is something spicy lingering.

A few years back a good friend, Hop Bunny G of HopBunnies.com, told me how she was loving rye beers at the moment. I confessed I wasn’t sure I could tell rye malts, like those in Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye IPA, from the stuff in Wheat Thins. Recently though, having had more exposure to them, I am starting to pick out that pumpernickel aroma and spicy kick that rye adds to a beer. This is what you take in when smelling a fresh poured Founders Black Rye.

TASTING NOTES

Fresh, Founders Black Rye has a piquant pine nose, awash with dry hop aromatics, showing that this is intended as an IPA, to be consumed fresh. Don’t age beer, especially this one. The head is large, light brown, with foamy bubbles that last a good while and cling to the glass. The mouthfeel is medium, with less thickness to the body than we might expect in a beer this dark, with good carbonation. The taste is another surprise, while the malts give a subtle Heath Bar flavor, they are not oily or as present as a hoppy porter. The spiciness from the rye blends with the pine, although without much roasted sweetness. The finish is slightly astringent, and mostly dry and clean.

CONCLUSION

Founders Black Rye is a conundrum of an ale. Even with the expanded BJCP categories, it defies style definitions, existing as complex rye IPA, hidden within the coating of “de-bitterized black rye malts”. The overall effect is a complex, tasty brew. Not likely the first choice for hopheads, Black Rye offers a great way to get a huge hop taste, in a more complex IPA. A real winner you should pick-up and try yourself.

7.5

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But can a pale ale be black?

THE BEER

The Brew Kettle Taproom and Smokehouse started out, in beerspeak, as a brew-on-premise, or BOP. The Strongsville Ohio joint allows you and your betrothed to ‘brew’ up a barrel of Wedding Witt for your guests. Punny labels extra. They still offer brewing on site today, as well as wine making. In addition to this very popular service, TBK also has a solid gastropub, focusing on barbecue, and brew their own in house beers for the restaurant. The beers, including 2014 Imperial IPA champion El Lupulo Libre. It’s amazing American IPA White Rajah has been in limited bottle distribution for the past few years in Ohio. Most of their well regarded brews have yet to make it outside of kegs, sadly. One beer that just did get packaged is White Rajah”s cousin, Black Rajah.

TASTING NOTES

True to its name on the execrable logo, The Brew Kettle Balck Rajah pours dark and opaque with a khaki head that shrinks soon after. The nose is the first hint of the deception. Dank vestigial hops and a pine forest fill the nose of that looks like a thin German dunkel or perhaps schwarzbier. Taste follows the nose at first, with major west coast hop flavors. then, a hint of sweetness plus some chocolate malt come in to play, but the finish is again all hops, big time IPA style bitterness blasts the palette. Thinner in body and lacking the patent malt flavors of a hoppy stout, this beer has overwhelming hop and grain notes, lacking nothing, save subtlety. Malty and bitter, hoppy and sweet, this beer as reviewed fresh. Aging it will rob the beer of bright hop notes. Bottling many of their hop forward beers, hopefully The Brew Kettle will soon implement a bottle dating system son to ensure beer lovers are enjoying fresh product.

CONCLUSION

The joy I take in Brew Kettle Black Rajah reminds me how good dark hoppy beers can be. Call them Cascadian Dark Ale, Black IPA, or India Black Ale, the best of these beers, when tasted fresh, are a worthy new style that gives craft beer lovers something new to seek out and enjoy.

8.5/10

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