Tuesday Tasting - IPAs

Hey everyone, so last week I was up in Tokyo for a few days to check out beer bars & also attend the first Japan Brewers Cup in Yokohama. I had a great time and was also able to pick up tons of beers. Which left me with a slight problem... ...my beer cellar is full. This is a good problem to have but as temperatures will start rising soon I decided I  needed to start drinking down my stockpile in a hurry.

That's why this Tuesday Tasting features 3 beers!

I started off in the afternoon with a Lucky Bucket IPA I picked up from the AQ Bevolution stand at the festival in Yokohama.

It's 6.3% ABV and pours a nice orange color with a decent head and a floral aroma I could smell at arms length! I got hints of mango and grapefruit/citrus, definitely some kind of tropical fruit. The flavor is quite bitter but pleasant with a fruit hoppiness first followed by a more piney finish. Pretty nice. It is a really solid IPA, give it a try!

When I got home I decided to focus on two Black IPAs or Cascadian Dark Ales I had. The first one I popped open was my Alaskan Black IPA which I picked up from Yamaichi via Rakuten.

It's 6.4% and pours a dark brown/black with a light thin tan head. The aroma is floral & citrusy. Wow, very nice! Floral hop at first, a mid mouth malt caramel/chocolate and ends on a clean crisp hop bitterness. It is really interesting to see how they merged the two style so well. You can definitely feel this is a true marriage between a dark malty beer and a hop IPA. Excellently balanced, really well made. It was quite easy to drink too! This second Black IPA I found that I really like. the first I found was Mikkeller's Sort Gul, overall this style has been a bit disappointing to me. This beer was really good though!











The third beer for this Tuesday Tasting is Demo a Black IPA from Magic Hat. I picked this up for a great price at Antenna America in Yokohama and decided to give it a shot.

I think the Demo poured slightly darker with a better head than Alaskan's Black IPA. It's 6% ABV and has a nice malty chocolate aroma but barely any hoppiness. The taste is slightly sour at first, mostly malt with not much hop bitterness. This black IPA focuses too much on the malt & doesn't have enough bitterness I think... As it warmed up I came to  like this beer more but it tasted like a fairly normal dark lager, stout or porter.

Overall, I find that a Black IPA is a style that seems really hard to do well. They either wind up tasting like a normal IPA that just happens to be black or like a normal dark beer that isn't particularly hoppy. Finding the right balance between the two seems to be tough. In my mind, a Black IPA has a malty sweet body, hoppy aroma and a taste that marries the two.

So to rank these 3 beers I'd go:

1. Alaskan Black IPA - a very nice example of the style
2. Lucky Bucket IPA - a really nice refreshing IPA
3. Demo Black IPA - a good beer but not what I want from a Black IPA

All in all a nice Tuesday Tasting!