Black IPA
Lone Tree Brewing Company

 

December 30th, 2013 - Lone Tree joins the Black IPA sweeping the Western half of the United States with their succinctly named Black IPA. The color is what you might expect, but the head is a bit more of that ashy aspen brown, darker even, with really lovely lacing. Around the glass, it separate, leaving a square frame in the round, an effect I don't remember seeing before on a beer like this. The nose is filled with pine and pine sap, and the attending scents of wet bark and wood. It's a callback to the temperate rainforests I fell in love with on my first visit to the Pacific Northwest, but almost better, with an accent from the dry malty char smell. The palate is thin, pushing a velvety soft carbonation, and on this smooth and delicate palate, Lone Tree manages a good, balanced hop profile. Unfortunately, there's a touch of a chemical cleaning product flavor that I just catch by the back of its collar in the aftertaste, like a rogue drop of pine scented cleaning goop found its way into the batch. Each taste after the first re-empheasizes that "old dead and rotting pine tree" taste, which makes it less and less enjoyable as I go. But the aroma is unaffected, and I find myself keeping my nose in here as we work through the rest of the tasters, returning to that lovely scent of the woods.