Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7.5

Black IPA by this young craft brewery, aiming at the Anglo-Saxon but now global idiom of APAs, IPAs, stouts and so on; from a can bought online and apparently brewed in the kettles of equally young and largely unknown Bare Brewing, also in the province of Luxembourg, Belgium. Huge foamy head filling the glass in instants, slowly reducing to a very densely creamy, pillowy, rocky and hops-enhanced, yellowish beige, even-bubbled, utterly firm head lasting for a long time on a very dark chocolate brown beer (near black indeed) with misty ruddy-burgundy edges. Very spicy-hoppy aroma of dry green peppercorns, green coffee beans, espresso, ginger powder, calamansi, burnt currants, toast, brown soap, ground pistachio, peppermint even, nutmeg, dry brown bread. Crisp onset, dryish from the start with almost no sweetness (as befits the genre), burnt blackcurrant and dried citrus peel aspects, lively carbonated with minerally 'stings', oily mouthfeel; smooth toasty and roasted-walnutty malts with 'deep' roasted bitter undercurrent quickly coming to the foreground in a chicory- and black coffee-like way, almost becoming dominant, with its bitterness doubled by a very leafy, rooty, wormwoody hoppiness, adding a slight hint at calamansi-like citrusiness and some black pepper, pine and ginger aromas. Ends a tad earthy but still quite clean as it ought to, with both that powerful hoppiness and roasted coffeeish bitterness persisting, but in a refreshing, almost 'juicy' kind of way. Frivolous, utterly spicy Cascadian dark ale - but a very credible one, more so than I was expecting; the American haze boys may not fancy this style anymore (with breweries like Stone and Firestone Walker having discontinued their leading examples years ago, sadly), but black IPA is given something of a second childhood in old Europe. Call it lagging behind, but I for one, having loved the style since it had its American heydays, am very happy with this geographical shift of interest, and have enjoyed many a fine black IPA brewed on Belgian, Dutch, British or even Slovenian soil. This particular one may just want to reduce the coffee roastiness and upscale the aromatic powers of the hops a bit to accentuate the 'IPA' part a bit more - something that goes for many of these contemporary Euro black IPAs, in my view - but it has guts, it has sleekness and technical refinement, and it tastes damn good. Take it from an old Cascadian lover.

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5

Dark, dark brown with a tall, frothy head. Aroma of chocolate, red currant, pine. Taste is mildly bitter up front, increasingly bitter at the end and a bit citric. Light to medium-bodied, watery texture, which is the greatest flaw here. Ok.

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 6

Blik op vakantie geprobeerd met LiekevdV. Het is een diep donkerbruin met een volle beige schuimkraag. Het heeft een aroma van koffie. De smaak is moutig, gebrand, wat wrang en fruitig. En ebt snel weg.

Appearance - 10 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

Sans être mauvaise, cette Arel Black n'est guère passionnante, voire un peu poussive. Avec 33 d'IBU, elle manque de ce peps qui aurait pu nous égayer alors que l'alcool, à 5,9 % est de son côté plutôt satisfaisant. Côté arômes, cela manque également un peu de funk, avec un cocktail un peu plat avec une intensité très moyenne. Le visuel est sur un noir sans mousse surmonté d'une mousse brune de 5 mm. Le nez est sur le résineux, un café un peu passé et de très légers agrumes. L'attaque est avant tout fraîche, sur les agrumes, la pêche, le résineux et un très léger café en rétro. La base torréfiée a du mal à s'exprimer et la seconde bouche monte simplement de façon limitée sur l'amertume. L’arrière-bouche est tout de même un peu plus sur le malt torréfié avec un léger café et des notes de noisette. Le final, un peu court et avec une petite astringence est su une amertume simple sans rien apporter. Moyen

33cl can. A clear dark reddish brown beer with a beige head. Aroma of dark fruits, raisins, mild bitterness. Taste of mild roasted dark malt, raisins, coffee, not too bitter.