Imposter In Disguise
Dutch Bargain (Brouwerij Brouwerslokaal) in Groede, Zeeland, Netherlands 🇳🇱
IPA - Black / Cascadian Dark Regular|
Score
6.55
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Artwork is deze maand verzorgd door Steef van Loenhout van LM Studio’s uit Breda.
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Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
4/I/23 - on tap, shared @ dr. Beer (Antwerpen), BB: n/a (2023-21)
Pretty cloudy orange red to rusty brown beer, small creamy off-white head, stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: sweet caramel malts, alcohol, fruity, gentle roast, some milk chocolate, some tropical fruits. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: bitter start, very hoppy, a bit malty, slightly sweet, herbal. Aftertaste: very bitter, harsh roast, hoppy, herbal bitterness, very bitter, very dry finish, more medicinal bitterness, herbs.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7.5
Draught Small off-white head over muddy brown beer, shards of lace. Dry straw, dry hops, dried exotic fruit, woodpulp. Dry bitterish flavour with exceptionally dry finish backthroat, almost dry-out effect like. Bit grainy, wholemeal bread, partly toasted; yet, after some time, apparently lots of restsugars. Light body, if quite (hopoil)slick. Medium carbonation at best. In the end a tad sweet, but generally nice black IPA - a genre that seems to disappear again. Pity, I vastly prefer it to all the NEIPA's of today...
Appearance - 3 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 5 | Overall - 3
“Pale black IPA” by Dutch Bargain in Groede, Netherlands – an intellectually ambitious attempt at "solving the long-lasting discussion" of black IPA being a style in its own right or just a hoppy stout; frankly I did not know this discussion existed at all, I for one have in any case accepted black IPA (or Cascadian dark ale) as a separate style many years ago, have a solid idea of what these beers are supposed to be and have enjoyed many examples of them from all over the western world in all those years. A solution to a problem which does not exist always makes me suspicious, and with good reason in this case, as I will now try to demonstrate. Shared by Ama Deke at Dutch Bargain’s Brouwerslokaal, this beer showed a pale greyish beige, irregular, open and shred-lacing head on a very murky, opaque caramel-brownish robe with ‘dirty orangey’ tinge – not looking very nice to be honest. Aroma of sweaty feet, old abbey cheese, old bread crust, dirty socks, bitter garden weeds, used coffee filters, caramel, dried apricot. Fizzy onset, estery in a dirty way, dried fruits, minerally accents; slender body with powdery yeast effects, rusk-like maltiness, ‘dusty’ old bread with coffee-bitter edge and retronasal effect of ‘old hops’, again sweaty feet and sweating cheese, wet white pepper, tree leaves, tea – making for an earthy bitterness, lingering in a notably ‘dirty’, yeasty environment. How to begin evaluating this… It looks unattractive, smells unpleasant and tastes unpleasant, so from a basic technical point of view, this seems like a failed brew even the most amateur kitchen brewer would not offer to his friends. Conceptually speaking, I do not get this one either: dubbed a ‘pale black IPA’ with a contradictio in terms inspired by that ridiculous ‘white stout’ fad from the past years (to which the brewery explicitly refers), this beer is neither pale, nor black, nor an IPA. The added coffee and cocoa cannot prevent it from falling apart completely – and what is the bloody point of making a black IPA pale anyway? This sounds equally pointless as wanting to turn a red IPA green – and call it a ‘green red IPA’. I can only conclude that black IPA, though admittedly the term is internally paradoxical if taken literally (hence the alternatives like ‘Cascadian dark ale’, ‘American black ale’ and so forth), has very firmly established itself in the past one or two decades as a beer style, has delivered many beautiful beers in that period and is accepted as such by just about everyone in the beer world. If Dutch Bargain has a problem with that, then they will have to come up with something immensely more convincing than this almost laughably failed amateur brew.