India Ink Double XX Black IPA
Royal Oak Brewery

 

This brew was served from the tap at Royal Oak Brewery in Royal Oak, Michigan. It arrived in a generic pint glass, showing brown cola coloring, and holding a one finger head of medium brown bubbles. This showed nice retention, leaving a ring of lacing atop the liquid, and jagged peaks of lacing dripping down the glass. A chill haze was noted to the clarity, without sediment. Carbonation appeared to be light. The aroma gave citric, piney, and grassy hop airs, metallic cooled coffee malts, fresh basil, marigold florals, biting straw, vanilla smoothness, cantaloupe, white sugar, and coconut husk. With warmth came soured milky lactics, light booze, and black shoe leather. Our first impression was that the flavoring gave much more bitter roastiness than the nose would have suggested, but this was met by fantastic organic freshness and earthiness of hops. The taste opened with toasted barley, roasty coffee malts, big citric hops to meet, creamy lactics, foamy plastics, and a vegetal celery quality. The middle came to a peak with nice sweetness to balance the bittered roast of malts and the bite of hops, with white sugar, citric flesh juiciness, and orange rind zest. Washing through the end was a revival of the malts, with soured coffees, pale toast, bittered grassy and resiny hops, tree bark, slick metallics, baker’s yeast, licorice, icy vanillas, and fresh ginger root. The aftertaste breathed of almond oils, soapy hops, dirty earthy hops, mineral, crystal malts, sticky pine bark, moss, dust, light chalks, drying coffee and cereal grain, and zucchini vegetals. The body was medium to full, and the carbonation was medium on the glug, but bubbled up heartily on the back of the sip. Each sip gave okay slurp, smack, and sip, but with lesser cream or froth. The mouth was coated with crispness, with light dryness and the faintest hoppy pucker. The abv was appropriate, and the beer drank quite nicely.

Overall, what we enjoyed most about this beer was its flavoring. At first whiff, the nose doesn’t afford much roast. On the following sip, however, you get an onslaught of roasty bitterness given from those coffees and burnt barley, while the hops swoop in to match and balance with their own resiny, earthy, and freshly organic bite. This helps keep things super fresh and drinkable, and the relatively hidden abv keeps you sipping all night long. This beer represents a true blending of styles, with the dark malty side meeting, contrasting, and blending with the freshest of the hoppy side of life. This is their best beer we’ve had to date.