Night Train
Arrowhead Brewing Company

 

 

650ml bottle, procured at the brewery earlier today, since when I've had a certain Guns n' fucking Roses song stuck in my apparently feeble head.

This beer pours a clear, very dark russet brown colour, with two fingers of puffy, rather loosely foamy, and thinly chunky beige head, which leaves some tacky snow rime lace around the glass as it quickly abates.

It smells of lightly toasted, bready caramel malt, a minor pithy meatiness, muted, but still kind of peppy orange and red grapefruit citrus bitters, wet pine needles, a small earthy nuttiness, and a further damp ashiness. The taste is well-roasted grainy and bready caramel malt, more burnt pine resin, singed (as on a BBQ) citrus slices, a wee earthy yeastiness, and some form of toasted nut dust.

The bubbles are fairly underwhelming in their wan and trod-upon seeming frothiness, the body medium-light in weight for the style, and sort of smooth, the blackened character not quite fully extending to a sensation of ashes in my mouth. It finishes off-dry, the malt still active under all that, um, blackness, which is the main culprit in the drying sensation currently flooding my better senses.

Well, this is certainly more darkened than Cascadian, and more black than IPA or American ale (?), so I can't fault truth in mildly confusing advertising. Anyways, a decent rendering of this maladjusted hybrid of a beer style, something that I would imagine going great with the meat that comes off of my ancient and rarely cleaned out propane BBQ back home.

Sells as a black IPA. Not bad with some interesting hops flavours (pine needles and citrus) but not very potent. The black component is very roasted, burned almost.