Long Way Home
Blank Slate Brewing Company

 

It's really no surprise to taste a beer that's billed as a "black" IPA and it turns out to be nothing more than simply a hoppy porter. However there's no threat of being underwhelmed with Blank Slate's black IPA of imperial proportion. With the promise to be an imperial chocolate IPA, on thing's for sure, this beer is a long way home from the common black IPA.

Long Way Home pours with extreme dark brown hues with deep garnet hues. Its creamy tan head is tightly woven and garners blanket-like comparisons. Although toasty maltiness commands the nose with suggestions of coffee, chocolate and toast, it does so with a solid rebuttal of burnt citrus peels and pine cinders. After which, the taste favors the malt once again with the savory character of burnt peanut brittle, bittersweet chocolate and burnt toast.

With a calm and somber development across the middle, the malt sweetness, toast and roast slowly relaxes and recedes, the hops grow to eventually claim its imperial IPA status. Those burnt hop notes of roasted citrus, campfire and perfumy pine all weave into a taste that's a culmination of baker's chocolate with orange and grapefruit peels, coffee with a grassy rootish earth character and a late taste of burnt pinecone and smoked pine needle.

Surprisingly, its medium-full body carries such a robust flavor that its dryish body keeps the ale dangerously drinkable. Though creamy and savory- the beer is a far cry from anything slow sipping or heavy. As the coffee and cocoa-like bitterness link up with the sappy hops, they both achieve a level of bitterness that neither can do on their own, but its bitterness is largely masked with the common residual sweetness that's common to imperial ale. A tinge of spicy alcohol warmth and a linger of chocolate orange stem well into the next sip.

 

Fantastic smell, sweet and hoppy, the taste throws you off with a slight chocolate taste. Pretty crazy beer that I need to try again.