Hoptical Illusion 4.0% Black IPA
The final beer in our trial hop series for 2024 is a new style for The Hop Shed – a hoppy black IPA. The key with a black IPA is that – unsurprisingly – it looks very dark, but still has majority IPA characteristics and without the sharp or roasty flavours that are usually associated with darker malts. I’ll get into how different malts are created and used in my next blog, but the key with a black IPA is to use a roast malt with no husk component (by either removing it from barley or using a huskless grain like wheat), which is where a lot of the more bitter & astringent flavours come from.
The trial hop I’m using in this beer is CF312, along with Jester and Opus. CF312 has a really interesting flavour which isn’t really like any English hop I’ve used before – it tastes quite green and resinous, with a little tropical fruit flavour underneath. Topped with a big dry hop to add orange & grapefruit citrus character, and gentle coffee and caramel from the malt, it might seem a little out there – but I’d encourage you to give it a go and see how it compares to your expectations!
Over the past ten or twenty years, IPA as a style has really become synonymous with craft beer. Traditionally, India Pale Ale (so named because it was imported from Britain to India) was a strong, bitter beer, but innovation over the years has subverted almost everything about it in one way or another! Here are a few examples:
- New England IPA – So named for the growing region the hops come from, NEIPAs tend to have a tropical fruit hop character, relatively low bitterness, and a full body thanks to addition of wheat and/or oats. They’re also usually hazy!
- Black IPA – As described above; but how do you make a black pale ale?! Some people prefer the name Cascadian Dark for that reason.
- Cold IPA – I brewed a Cold IPA back at the start of the year (Hop to It) which proved very popular – perhaps because it uses lager yeast, which means technically it isn’t an ale at all.
In addition to this, you can also get session versions of most styles, which usually means an ABV of below 4-4.5% (although there’s no legal definition, so you can technically put it on whatever you like). So if IPAs don’t have to be strong, or bitter, or even pale, what does it even tell you about the beer?
Perhaps unhelpfully, I think it depends on the context in which it’s used. Generally, it means hoppy – I’d certainly expect a beer labelled as an IPA to have a little more hop punch than one labelled as a pale ale. Usually I would also expect a higher bitterness, unless it’s a sub-style in which that’s specifically not the case. More, I think breweries often use it to signify an ethos – whether that’s a craft brewery pushing the envelope, or a more traditional one showing their loyalty to the roots of the style. Honestly, it probably doesn’t tell you as much as it used to, and you may need to dig into exactly what type of IPA it is to find out much about the beer; but with almost every brewery having one or more in their core line up these days, it’s certainly here to stay.
