IPA Black - The Kernel Brewery

CanuckRover

Ontario (Canada)

3.9/5  rDev -4.4%
look: 3.5 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

My first go at a Black IPA.

Pours a completely opaque dark brown, verging on muddy. Emptied the bottle including a generous helping of UFOs. Nice head retention, but fairly slippery lacings.

Big citrus hops on the nose. Nicely intermingled with milk chocolate and just a touch of coffee bitterness behind.

Very interesting flavour profile. I assume this is par for the course with the style, but the flavours are very tough to pick apart, I hadn't thought the two personalities would meld so well. First impression is citrus and pine from the generous hopping. At some point, hard to tell when, bits of chocolate touch down on the tongue. Fresh bitterness of the hops is gradually replaced with the roasted coffee bitterness you'd expect from a stout. Finish is a combination of the resinous hops and dark coffee.

Very interesting beer. By gut tells me that a tad too much emphasis is on the hops, I feel like the malt barely comes through at all, but, as I said, this is my first of the style, so I could be wrong.

Serving type: bottle

01-16-2011 18:32:09 | More by CanuckRover