The Alchemist / Ninkasi / Stone More Brown than Black IPA

Brewed by Stone Brewing Co.
Style: Black IPA
Escondido, California USA

Serve in Shaker, Tulip

Bottle from Capone’s. Pour medium to dark brown, nose is nicd with grapfruit, cumquat and resinous simcoe flavors. First si It is a beautiful bittness balance wit malt and malt. Nice lingering finish is bergamon.

Pours almost black with a huge foamy white head that stays forever. Great looking beer in the glass. Aroma is massive citra hops. Grapefruit, kiwi, and other random tropical citrus. Flavor has an intial roastiness that I didn’t pick upon the aroma, but is expected from the color. There is a very unique fruitiness to the hop flavor, but it is all a little thin to me. Mouthfeel is a touch thin as well. Kind of slick in your mouth with the malt note nonexistent in the finish. Doesn’t live up to the smell, but good.

Bottles from Capone’s and Craft. Pours turbid burnt sienna with 3-finger khaki head. Nose is vienna malt, piney hops, pineapple, mango, mild coffee. Has an initial blast of resiny sticky hops, followed by the malt, some tropical fruit, and some finishing malty bitterness. The malt does a good job of complementing the hops here.

Bottle. Murky brown beer with a tan head. Big grapefruit and summer fruit aroma. Summer fruti and grapefruit flavor. Medium bodied. Nice bitterness. Pine and light summer fruit lingers with grapefruit.

Bottle from Craft outlet. I liked this one a lot. A bit different that your typical IPA due to the nice roasted malt additaves. A bold floral and pine aroma. Same in taste with hints of chocolate, roast and grapefruit. A decent blaned. Slightly thin however. But solid.

A dark brown, perhaps chestnut, color with a soapy khaki colored head. A nice fresh hop aroma full of grapefruit and pine. Really quite resinous with lots of fresh citrus qualities. Really not much malt to be found. There is some toast and nuttiness to the flavor, however. Grapefruit hop notes follow quickly behind it and there is a solid bitterness on the finish with lots of pine flavor.

Good dry pine, and some nut and sweet malts. Black body with good head. Brown floaters moving around pint glass like carbination bubble would do. Good flavor mix of citrus, nut meg and some sweetener. Dry palate afterward with some power grapefruit left there. Good Beer

Medium brown and smells great - lots of bright, grapefruity, weedy hops. Quite dry, again with lots of woody hops. Hints of sweetish, nutty malts pull it together. Clean like a Stone beer, and deceptively simple, everything just comes together really well.