Brodie’s Beers – Dalston Black IPA

I’m a man who enjoys his creature comforts and a taste of home and as I originally hail from rural Lincolnshire the part of North London I’ve chosen to settle in is the idyllic leafy suburb of Crouch End. Gritty, urban East London has never really appealed to me and the thought of walking down the suburb the beer I’m about to review takes in title from alone at night puts the willies right up me. Having said that East London is not without its charms such as fantastic flower markets, brilliant Indian cuisine and more recently it’s become home to an increasing number of excellent pubs and micro breweries serving and creating the sacred elixir we have come to call craft beer.

Brodie’s was founded by James and Lizzie Brodie in the summer of 2008 after they took over the abandoned Sweet William Brewery in Leyton and they brew a mixture of traditional English style bitters alongside some hyper hopped brews that take inspiration from our American friends across the pond. When I was in the Mason & Taylor a couple of weeks ago I tried my first Brodies Beer, Hackney Red IPA and was thoroughly impressed so along with the Kernel IPA Citra I reviewed last week I took home a bottle of their Dalston Black IPA as I am a big fan of this relatively new genre.

Brodies Dalston Black IPA, in a word, superb.

Unlike a lot of the craft breweries whose beer I really enjoy Brodies beers are bottle conditioned and go through another period of fermentation before they are consumed. The majority of beers I have enjoyed recently from both sides of the Atlantic have not gone through the bottle conditioning process but have been immensely enjoyable as have the few bottle conditioned beers such as this one but as I’m not a brewer myself I don’t understand the advantages or disadvantages of creating the beer in this way. I think this goes a long way to prove that regardless of how the beer is created or served if it tastes good and drinkers are happy then brewers should have free license to brew their beer as they see fit and call it what they want.

After leaving the bottle of Dalston Black to settle for just a few minutes to make sure the yeast and I don’t become too closely acquainted I gently pour the dark, lively contents into a pint glass. This black IPA is not too thick, certainly not as thick as a stout or a porter but visibly has more body than a standard pale ale and produces about a centimetres worth of a latte hued head. Even before I have a chance to get my nose in the aroma hits me, bags and bags of earthy citrus, predominantly grapefruit flavours cruise through the sinuses with barely any hint of the roasted malts within.

One thing I love about a this style of brew is how it completely tricks the senses and I’ll never forget my first taste of Thornbridge Raven, my first black IPA, having never tried this style of ale before. Knowing you have a beer in front of you with an ABV of over six or seven percent that’s brewed with dark malts you immediately expect something heavy and laden with sweet malt flavours but when tasting a black IPA you instead receive a beautifully refreshing hit of bitter citrus and slices of toasted bread. Dalston Black is no exception, it is pithy, malty wonderment captured and preserved in bottled form and potentially one of the best beers in this style that I’ve had the luck to try. The hops really whiz around the palate and make your cheekbones tingle. The malts are not too in your face and let the hops take centre stage and so appeal to my personal tastes beautifully. The malts in the beer are never overpowering and the notes of coffee I often get with this style that I would normally associate with a great stout are very muted but provide a study scaffold for the resinous, zesty flavour. The finish is long and wonderfully bitter and your tongue keeps dancing long after you’ve swallowed your last drop until you are left ruing the day you only decided to by one bottle.

I’m having a lot of luck with beer recently, thanks to social networking and some fantastic, fanatical writing by my fellow bloggers I’ve not found much wrong with any of the beers I’ve tried lately. I’m now excited that there are so many beers from breweries such as Kernel and Brodies that I’ve really got my work cut out for me, in fact the London brewing scene is looking very healthy indeed! Thank you Brodies for joining in the serious arse kicking that the UK ale scene needs, East London is suddenly starting to look a whole lot more inviting.

Magic Rock Brew Co: Magic 8 Ball

This blog is still in its early infancy and as much as I want to try and keep it varied and without bias I cannot shy away from the chance to review a beer that has been released within my one month tenure as a blogger. I have already gushed about two beers from Magic Rock Brewing in previous posts and like my blog, the brewery is still in its early stages of development but unlike my blog it is already producing some seriously heavyweight output.

The beer I’ll be sampling today will be the brewery’s new black IPA Magic 8 Ball which has already received rave reviews from other beer writers and as I have been blown away by every black IPA I’ve tried so far I cannot wait to wrap my tongue around this one. I also really love a good oxymoron and ‘black IPA’ is simply wonderful, I’ve read articles that condemn the identity that this style of brew has claimed but I think it is a perfect way of describing to the drinker what to expect from the beer and I am really glad that most brewers have adopted this label.

Magic 8 Ball will be the seventh brew I’ve sampled from Magic Rock and at this point I’ll admit that I am a bit of a Magic Rock fanboy. I’ve followed them through Facebook and Twitter since they announced that they would be opening a brewery and it’s through the clever use of these two mediums that they have managed to gain a prolific and hardcore following. Magic Rock take the majority of their inspiration from the American brewing scene with many of their ales being inspired by beers that hail from the west coast of America. This of course means big, bold flavours and lots and lots of wonderful, aromatic hops.

I wasn't sure if I ordered enough...

Cracking open the Magic 8 Ball my first instinct is to take a big sniff from the top of the bottle, my nasal cavity is instantly awash with flavours of lemon peel and orange marmalade, the hops smell ultra fresh which is unsurprising considering it’s only recently been brewed. It pours as you would expect, thick and black leaving quite a thin off-white head that doesn’t linger but has enough consistency to leave a thin layer that leaves some nice lacing around the glass as you swill it around. I’ve chosen a large snifter for this beer so I can get a big whiff before I take a sip, I’m still getting the fresh yet bitter citrus notes but after a second smell I can just about get a hint of the roasted malts present in the brew.

Taking my first sip I was expecting this beer to taste like an IPA, the nose is all about fresh hops but the Magic 8 Ball holds many surprises and secrets. As it hits your palate the initial taste is one of orange and lemon rind with big chunks of bitter grapefruit but this lasts less than half a second and you barely have time to collect yourself before you are hit with a huge wash of roasted malt that would make even the most manly of stouts cower like mice in the corner. The finish is long, bitter and smoky and well worth lingering over, this beer is so complex that I’ve actually tried three bottles of the stuff at slightly different temperatures and in a range of glassware just so I can try and get the measure of it. I don’t think I have yet and this is great, It’s almost like when you buy a new record and it takes you several listens to get into it, each play revealing more of it’s musical secrets. Magic 8 Ball is like one of those records, each sip giving you something new and challenging you to define this beer, essentially it’s a craft beer geeks dream.

The best analogy I’ve come up with for this beer is that it’s a bit like a good breakfast, it starts with a slice of fresh grapefruit followed by a piece of well toasted granary bread topped with some bitter orange marmalade and then washed down with a swig of freshly filtered coffee. Being this complex it’s not an everyday beer, it’s something to savour and crack out on especially cold nights such as this one, although being so breakfast like the temptation to crack one open before I head to work in the morning is almost too much to bare.