Elusive Brewing: Baker’s Dozen: Portents of Doom NZ BIPA (England: Black IPA: 6% ABV)
Visual: Black. Thin brown slightly creamy head that leaves suds.
Nose: Blueberry. Vanilla toffee. Pineapple. Peach. Milky coffee. Grapefruit.
Body: Chocolate. Nutty. Blueberry. Bitter coffee. Slight cream. Grapefruit. Nettles. Tingling hop character. Bitter hops. Vanilla toffee. Slight strawberry.
Finish: Very nutty. Slight earthy hop character. Peppery. Grapefruit. Great bitterness. Bitter coffee granules. Slight charcoal.
Conclusion: Sometimes it feels hard to draw the line between a black IPA and a heavily hopped stout. This is not one of those times. This really shows how a good Black IPA is recognisably different.
It does have the bitter cocoa and bitter chocolate you would expect from the more bitter end of stouts, that I will admit yes, but smooth with a toffee character that feels very familiar to an IPA fan in its implementation.
Similarly it feels more than just bitter, prickly hops, though yes it also has that. There is a mix of slightly sweet yet fresh pineapple and tart grapefruit that makes the intense bitter malts easier to drink despite the added hop bitterness used liberally.
There is a subtlety to the fruit as well, a blueberry note that very much surprised me to find for example. I never associated that with NZ hops before, but while it is subtle it is delicious and definitely here. There is a lot of the tarter NZ character, but that blueberry really stands out for making this beer, well, stand out from the crowd.
It has lovely dark malt bitterness, great hop prickle and bitterness, a freshness that makes it easier it drink and shows the NZ hops wonderfully. Also blueberry. A lovely BIPA, definitely worth it.
Background: First up, this is not one of Elusive’s many, many West coast IPA variants they have done recently. Instead it is a new Black IPA, another IPA style I adore and feel is often under-represented these days. YAYZ! A New Zealand hopped Black IPA at that, I love NZ standard IPAs, so a black IPA take definitely had my interest. I don’t know much about the collaboration partners. Baker’s Dozen. Will have to see if I can find out more, a quick google suggests they have won a bunch of awards for their beers – but these days that doesn’t always mean much. Their line up looks cool – mainly described as hop forwards cask ales. Will have to keep an eye out for them. This beer’s had a complicated tasting history. My first can I started doing notes on aaaand, knocked the darn glass over, spilling a good 75% of it. Bugger. Not done that for a while. So I grabbed another can. And drank it before I could do notes. This is the third can, now finally having notes done for it. Also I’m typing this on a new keyboard as the beer went all over my old one and utterly fucked it. Between the two tastings I listened to two different History Of Guns Albums, Apophenia and Flashes Of Light – pretty much their entire line up is free at the mo on bandcamp, so I grabbed a bunch of LPs I had not heard before. This was another beer grabbed from Independent Spirit. Repeatedly, due to that spilling.
