Draught Very good, frothy dark cream head over virtually black beer, leaving fine lace. Ashes, liquorice, charcoal, sweet roast, bit of chocolate. Sweet-liquorice-roast, all mild and in very good balance. Some orangepeel, bit meaty esters. Ashes more retronasal and in retreat compared to the nose. Some sweetness backthroat. Warming up, some ureum. Feels better bodied than it probably is. Quite well-carbonated, almost refreshing. Good black IPA, not very dry to sweetish, but good balance.

The first bottled beer by this brand new microbrewery in Kontich near Antwerp, set up by Kevin Devos, owner of The Beer Shop (obviously the first, and so far only, distribution channel of this beer). I have known Kevin personally for several years and considering his enthusiasm in craft beer, it should come as no surprise that he was going to come up with his own home made beer some day - and that this beer was going to be anything but traditional. In this case, he opted for a black IPA, but added wheat malt to the bill and spiced it up with grains of paradise, an African plant related to ginger, with seeds that have been used in beer (and outside of beer too) for centuries. Comes from a longneck bottle with simple label mentioning little more than brewery, ingredients and ABV, but with a personalized crown cap showing the Malcroy logo - this must be one of the rarest crown caps on the market, surely I can make some or other crown cap collector very happy with it... Anyway: irregularly but tightly membrane-like lacing, medium thick, mousy, pale greyish beige, opening head leaving just a flat 'island' of foam in the middle but retaining very well around the edge; black robe, but put under bright light, a deep, warm, pure and clear ruby hue becomes visible. Aroma of iced coffee and coffee powder from a bag, toasted walnuts, burnt brown bread and even a touch of charcoal, black peppercorns - in this case almost certainly representing the grains of paradise, hard toffee, chewing tobacco, quite strong iron (iron shavings even), old raisins, faint background hints of liquorish, brown soap, butter, mud and nutmeg. Restrained sweetishness in the onset, just a dash of raisin and a touch of dried blackberries, light teriyaki-like umami side and - quite outspoken in this case - a 'dim' sourish undercurrent stretching through the whole, possibly related to the wheat that has been used here. Carbonation remains soft (a good thing in this case), mouthfeel is quite full and oily; thoroughly nutty, toasty and lightly caramelly maltiness, slick, only very subdued in sweetness with more emphasis on toasty bitterness yet nowhere too harshly so; clear grains of paradise spiciness in the end, somewhere in between the toastiness of the malts and the bitterness of the hops, and in fact - as was probably the intention - accentuating the spiciness of the hops a bit. Leafy, cedar- and vaguely grapefruit peel-like hop character, only faintly aromatic really, remaining all too mild for anything labelled as an IPA; the toasted bitterness of the malts, however, do provide a lasting, more 'rounded' and mouth-filling bitterness which survives the hops in the end. I would label this a dry stout much rather than a BIPA, for which it lacks in both New World hop aromatics (preferably of the piney and / or citrusy kind) and downright hop bitterness. That said, however, it is quite rare for a new Belgian brewery to opt for this style to begin with especially for a first beer, and that alone deserves attention; it is equally important to stress that Kevin brews every drop of every one of his beers himself, no outsourcing or gypsy brewing here, and that this beer is completely free of technical flaws. That latter fact alone deserves an extra point my book, though I maintain that with a more generous hop dosage and more 'thorough' dry-hopping, this Gunnison can indeed easily be turned into a full-fledged, high quality 'Cascadian dark' ale.