New Glarus Black Top

Brewed by New Glarus Brewing Company
Style: Black IPA
New Glarus, Wisconsin USA

Serve in Shaker, Tulip

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Tasted from a 12oz. bottle. Poured a rich dark brown with a lasting, frothy, light brown head . Big hop aroma and taste. My favorite New Glarus beer to date.

This is my sixth bottle of this beer and I have love every one. Beer pours dark brown color with a retained tan colored head. Aroma is very pleasent with chocolate and fresh pine also some toast. Taste is a beautiful amalgem of sweet and bitter, somewhat like dark chocolate. Another awesome New Glarus brew. Amazing!!!

Pours to a deep garnet hued brown-mahogany body with a thin, creamy, off-white head. The aroma has a metric boat load of juicy fruity hops. Grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, fruit zests, and balanced with some spruce or pine hops. It’s been awhile since hops have been this nice in a beer. The flavor actually works really well. I am not normally a huge fan of Black IPAs. Most often, the malts really don’t work with the hops. In this case, it works really well. Bright citrus and pine hops with a lightly bitter chocolate and sweet brown sugars/molasses. The palate is crisp and refreshing and yet moderately bitter. Very balanced with a moderate carbonation. I will be buying more of this beer.

Pretty good beer. Generally I don’t care for dark hoppy brews, but there are exceptions and this is one of them. Poured a lovely, light tan, thick, foamy, billowy head that lasts a long time and lots of lace. Color is a very dark, clear garnet with some bubble trails (seen with a flashlight). Aroma is very hoppy with pine, citrus, and pineapple predominant along with malt. Flavor is similar to nose and I don’t pick up much of the roastiness that I expected. Body is good and ditto carbonation. Finish is fairly long, ending with fresh hop. Good drinking beer.

Pours a murky dark brown with a nice light tan head and lots of lacing. Nose is citrus, pine, hops, chocolate, caramel, and malts. Taste is citrus, lemon, black pepper, hops, caramel all perfectly balanced with some faint chocolate. Creamy palate with light carbonation. Finish is dry with a nice citrus taste that lingers. Another winner from arguably America’s best brewery!

Pours dark red with a large tan head. Smells of grapefruit and caramelized or candied fruits. Taste is bitter with hints of sweetness. Medium-bodied with a slick texture and and mild mouth-carbonation, New Glarus Black Top finishes with some bitterness.

Pours a dark brown/black color with a slight fluffy, off-white head. Scent has chocolate malts, molasses, and bitter hops in the mix. Basically the taste is a more robust version of an IPA. It still has a bitter taste throughout but is nicely complimented by the sweet tastes of chocolate and molasses. A very complex beer that overloads the taste buds at first making for a great sipping beer. A great brew using a more unique style that you just don’t find too many of in your local beer store. A must try!

This is a great IPA in Black. A creeper of a hop aroma. Heavy on the hop light on the caramel full on the flavor!

The beer pours a deep brown, but more like a dark ruby red when held up to the light. The head is off white, very large and billowy, and has a few big loose bubbles, but keeps it tight for the most part. The beer leaves nice lacing on the glass.

The aroma is very piney with some citrus rind, and light woodsy earthy notes creeping around in the background. The beer is very pungent, and very hoppy smelling. Like with many hoppy beers that smell great the aroma of this beer is on the verge of stunning but in no way complex. It smells like pine trees and fresh hops, and that’s awesome.

As noted by previous raters, it would be awful hard to pin this as a Black IPA while blindfolded. Yes, there is an earthy character to the beer, and there is a tiny bit of roasty bitterness in the finish.... but I feel like you’ve got to dig through enough hop flavor to find those elements that not seeing the color of the beer these flavors might be overlooked. Which of course leads me to the hopping, here we’ve got a lot of hop flavor particularly in that piney/citrusy "chinooky" vein, but it leaves out a lot of the over the top bitterness that a lot of the beers with this hop profile have. I like beers with that over the top bitterness, but this is really damn good too. Of course this is not to say that the beer is not bitter, it is, and very pleasantly so. But it’s far more fruity than it is bitter. The beer has a nice dry finish and an great lingering bitterness, it seems like every time IPAs finish like that it makes me drink them quickly and frequently. Needless to say this is right up my alley

12oz bottle purchased at Pick n’ Save outside of Milwaukee. Pour is black with almost no head. This beer reminds me a lot of another Wisconsin favorite - Sprecher Black Bavarian. The fantastic mix of chocolate and toasty malt blends with the sharp bitterness and piney character of a top-notch IPA. This beer does really shows off the potential of black IPA by combining the best of both worlds in a mix that is better than either beer separately. Very well done.