Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA
Genesee Brewing Co.

I am 73 years ols, and live in Rochester, the home of Genesee. I want them to succeed as they have been a local business for my entire lifetime. However, this was the first beer in my life that I could not finish. An IPA is supposed to be bitter, not sweeter than a porter. It was sweeter than a fountain Coke. WTF is this brewmaster doing?

 

 

I was excited when I first saw these Genesee brew house brews, I enjoyed many of the dundees from Genesee. This is not on that level, tastes incredibly harsh and of low quality yeast. I kind of like the dark malt flavors of this but the hops do not complement them at all.

 

 

 

Bought as a mixed 6 pack at Giant Eagle. Some friends were curious about this so I got to be the guinea pig on this one. At first I thought I was in for a surprise. The aroma was fairly enticing, nice dark roasted malts and pleasant hops. Then it went downhill... and FAST! Way too astringent for me, way too harsh. Couldn't force myself to finish the glass, poured it after 3 attempts. Just couldn't find anything enjoyable about this except for the smell. Too bad, what a letdown.

 

 

 

Had on draft in a pint glass.

A pretty good looking dark brown pour with a mocha colored small creamy head that leaves decent lacing around the rim of the glass.

Smells of cocoa, burnt caramel and faint hops.

Taste is more Porter/stout than IPA. Lots of burnt caramel sweetness with a light hop flavor on the finish. As it warms the burnt caramel takes over...way to much. This becomes cloying rather quickly.

Mouthfeel is slick and coating. A bit heavy and fatiquing.

This started out as a decent beer but quickly turned into a bit of a mess. Very sweet with little hop bite. Not my idea of a black IPA. Even if this was classified as a stout it is just to sweet and cloying to enjoy. One and done for me.

 

 

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's some serious brew! I had some other recent products of this brewery (from Aldi's) and they were good, but this one is outstanding.

It's black and nearly opaque with a bit of smallish head and lace. The aroma is funky and yeasty and hoppy and smoky. All the things it should be.

The taste is over the top - American! Big and malty with mountains of smoke and hops bitterness. Great! It almost goes to the - too much - sour side, but it manages to stay good.

The brew lingers in your mouth bitter. Long times. Nice.

This one really works and is recommended. I will get more if I can find it.

 

Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA - Genesee Brewing Co. / Dundee Brewing Co. Poured from the bottle into a pint glass, this beer's head is one half finger thick, with lateral lacing, and an extremely dark brown body.

Smells like a decent blend of roasted malts and hops.

I taste hearty, roasted malts along with a fair representation of the hops used in this brew. It really is a great balance.

The mouthfeel here is smooth and clean.

I'll give Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA - Genesee Brewing Co. / Dundee Brewing Co. a 4.5 overall. I'll probably pick this up again.

Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA - Genesee Brewing Co. / Dundee Brewing Co., with an ABV of 8.0% This brew pours out a deep brown color with a nice light brown head. This brew has the look of cola, not saying that is a bad thing. I really like the look of this brew. The smell is rich with flavors. You pick up on roasted grins,malts, and hops. Now for the taste, it is bold with flavors. There are a lot nice roasted malts and grains in this brew. You also pick up some nice hops at the end of the taste. There is a lot going on in Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA. You really can't pick up on the 8.0% ABV in this brew, it just smooth, with no bad aftertaste. The mouthfeel of Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA, is rich, bold, and smooth. Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA has a nice balance to it, there is nothing overpowering about this brew. Overall I'm giving Genesee Brew House Imperial Black IPA a 4.5 out of 5. Genesee Brewing Co. / Dundee Brewing, did a nice job with this one. I would buy this brew again.

 

This brew was served on tap at ButaPub in Rochester, New York. It arrived in a Three Heads pint glass showing a deep and dirty soy sauce coloring. It held a half finger tall head of chicory colored foam. This retained decently well before dissipating into wet islands of lacing left clinging around our glass. No haze or sediment was appreciated, and carbonation appeared to be moderate. The aroma was dominated by wet roastiness of brown, caramel, and burnt black grain, subtle hints of synthetic coffee creamer, vinyl plastics, almond mild, toffee bread and brown sugar cloy, mild citric and piney hoppiness, faint buttery diacetyls, dried molasses, mineral water, and flakey chocolate cereal graininess. The taste to follow was a bit more zippy, but not as hoppy as one would hope. Notes here included syrupy dark cherry, Tootsie Roll sugariness, plastic phenols, roasted but watered caramel, coffee, black, and chocolate graininess, yeasty aluminum, vegetal cauliflower sugars, chocolate flavored whey protein powder, wet cardboard, bleachy wash, and distant hiccups of floral, citric, and lightly piney hops. The aftertaste showed a fullness and deeper bittering of grainy roast, along with allowing some hotter stings of clean alcohol to stark poking through. The body was just about medium, and the carbonation was soft and modest. Each sip gave decent slurp, smack, cream, froth, and pop. A light sticky and saucy coating was left filmed across the mouth, interrupted by dashes of astringent dryness here and there. The abv was appropriate and, for the most part, masked well. Drinkability was fine, as you could easily put away more than one of these if you weren’t thinking about it.

Overall, we’re glad we finally found time to try this guy. It has been hard for us to get over to the Genesee Brew House itself lately, and we’ve been lazy and neglected to buy their new offerings (this beer included) once they started rolling some new labels off the bottling line. While we’ve generally enjoyed the initial products coming out of the revamped Brew House, this one didn’t really live up to that expectation for us. Admittedly we’ve become spoiled with the array and availability of some phenomenal black ales in the market right now, but if you’re going to call something an “IPA”, albeit a variant of an IPA, you’re priority has got to be making the hops shine. That just isn’t the case here. Honestly, this beer comes across much more like a blend between a brown ale and a bock, with high residual sweetness, cloy, and a reasonable amount of roasted graininess. The hops most certainly get lost in all of this, making the beer seem all but incomplete and dull. The final product would have been more agreeable to its description, and actually rather unique, if they could have found a way to marry these two components together.