Black IPA? What’s next, Green IPA?

[brewinhard]

I say it’s time for the homebrew style American Brown Ale to ramp up and go pro.

Tasty

Agreed on that, and another similar style - the 'West Coast Amber', "Imperial Amber' or whatever you want to call it. Beers like Red Rocket from Bear Republic, they do not fit at all into the current American Amber category.


I would also prefer to see American Red Ale or West Coast Red Ale be a style before Black IPA. I feel that American Amber ales are definitely different than a strong American Red Ale with a shitload of hops! Come'on BJCP!

[Nate Diggler]

How about IPA as "India Porter Ale", which is really what the style is closest to (the brown kind), just hopped up.

[Reposado]

I see Tasty's point, but I must admit that I too have been guilty of brewing up a bad-ass hoppy black ale (Black Betty!) and settled on calling it a Black IPA.

Just me being lazy I guess, but laziness is one of my strong suits, and the beer is always a big hit.

There are a lot of creative things that we could call this emerging and very much deserving style, and there are a lot of great ideas in this thread, but "Cascadian Dark Ale"? Really? Ugh...

[Thirsty Boy]

How about just an over arching qualifying term called "India" - where the word "india" basically just means "Especially Bitter and Hoppy" In the same way that "Imperial" means "extra strong and intense"

Then you can have

India Pale Ale
India Brown Ale
India Black Ale
India Porter
India whatever...

and the BJCP or whoever simply decides whether certain styles are allowed to include an "India" category or not. ie: the idea of an india scottish ale is stupid, seeing as one of the features of a scottish ale is its low hopping.

And the qualifying wordds could apply to anything. So a beer might go into the catergory Pale Ale - with the qualifiers India and Imperial. Which would be the same as an IIPA .... or it could be in the DarK Ale category with the qualifier "india" and there is your Black IPA

Then you could absorb some of the seemingly exponentially expanding "American" and "Imperial" styles, which after all are usually just hoppy & bitter or extra strong & intense versions of other styles anyway - and avoid the need for creating new styles every time someone decides to dump 10lb of extra malt and double the hopping rate of some existing style and then whine that they want it to have a style all of it's own.

TB

[Mills]

So is it bull shit for me to enter an up coming competition my IPA dosed at bottling to make it a Black IPA?

[Sgt_cerevisiae]

What's wrong with simply calling these beers "American Black Ale?"
It's simple, descriptively accurate and reflects it's regional origin.

Versions above ~7.5% ABV we call Strong American Black Ale.
Give up on the "Imperial" because, well, FUCK Imperialists!



And, I gag a little every time I hear it called "Cascadian Dark Ale"