October 2013 Tasting: Black Beers

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dbüscher
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October 2013 Tasting: Black Beers

#1 Post by dbüscher » Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:14 am

Black beers, you say??

Get ready for some Guinness Black Lager! I keed, I keed. Actually, that is probably a very well-brewed beer and a fitting illustration of what this tasting is all about: turning traditionally lighter colored ales and lagers black.

Malting techniques for dark and roasted malts have improved so much that it is possible to turn pretty much any beer black while maintaining control over any roasty, bitter, or burnt malt characters. Want to turn your classic Saison black without adding any coffee flavor or aroma? No problem, just toss in some de-bittered, de-husked black malt right before the sparge or cold-steep it briefly and add it during the boil. How about the mother of all brewing oxymorons, the Black India Pale Ale, wha? In this case, maybe you can allow some of the roasty bitterness of a chocolate malt to come through while backing off on the bittering hops a bit to make sure it does not become astringent.

So here are just a few of the styles we might consider turning black for the tasting: Swartzbiers (i.e. Black Lager), Saison, Tripel, IPA, Dunkelweizen (i.e Black Hefe?), etc…
On-tap: Holy Hop Grenade, Coffee Amber Ale, Coco(a)nut Ale, Cracked Pepper Hibiscus Belgian, Doppelbach, Sidney Portier, American Barleywine

Lagering/Conditioning: Munich Dunkel, AAB Maibock, Brett Rye IPA, Russian Imperial Stout

On-deck: CocoMolé Ale

Pröst!

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