Brewdog: Prototype: Black Rye IPA (Scotland: BIPA: 6.5% ABV)
Visual: Very dark brown to black. Large creamy browned head.
Nose: Kiwi. Muggy hops. Malt chocolate. Dry roasted peanuts. Slightly dry. Sulphurous eggs.
Body: Milky chocolate. Slight brown bread to wholemeal crackers. Kiwi and grapes. Slightly peppery. Vanilla toffee. Custard.
Finish: Milky chocolate. Black pepper. Moderate hops and bitterness. Milky coffee. Wholemeal crackers.
Conclusion: A lot of rye based beers overuse the rye element, in my opinion. I find it works better used sparingly to add something to the texture, and a bit of spice to the body rather than being something that dominates the beer. This actually uses the rye fairly lightly – it builds up over time to become prominent late on, but very gentle early in the beer.
The main black IPA base is fairly simply done – moderate chocolate, but actually leaning more towards toffee and custard notes than you would expect. Feels like some influence of a traditional IPA than you usually get in a BIPA. Don’t get me wrong, of course the chocolate and coffee notes are more dominant – here in a milky and smooth style, but it isn’t just showing those elements.
For an IPA, black otherwise, the hops seem to be lesser used than normal. You mainly get kiwi on the flavours side, and moderate levels of hop character and kick. This is probably the weakest part of the beer for me – while this manages to use the rye style well, the hop use only seems competent – very minimal in what it has for range, and seems lacking compared to the many other excellent BIPAS.
So, looking at this, the main difference maker in it is the rye. Even by the end it isn’t that harsh, just adding nice peppery weight to the beer. It is a generally competent BIPA, but feels like there could be so much more done with it. Keep the malt and rye as it is, but really fruit up the hops, then they may have something here.
As the beer is now, competent bit only competent in a world of exceptional Black IPAs.
Background: Third, and what was initially the final beer of this year’s Brewdog Prototype vote. I say initially as barely a week or so after releasing the three beers, saying that they would not release the blond ale as it was not up to snuff, well they released the blond ale. Considering bottling, posting, etc time I’m fairly sure they had an idea that the blond ale would be out shortly so I have no idea why they didn’t just wait a few weeks and release the lot at once. Sigh. Ah well. Anyway, this is a Black IPA made with rye. It is pretty much all in the name – oh, also it has a decent 70 IBU. As always I am not an unbiased actor on Brewdog beers. This was grabbed from Brewdog’s shop, and drunk while listening to some of Jonathan Young’s Disney covers. Because of course.
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