Northern Nights
Great North Aleworks

 

Near black color where the light shines through the edge. Lasting, but small, head. Good streaks and spots for lace.

Spicy, black pepper aroma. There's also a decent semisweet chocolate nose.

This is a black IPA with a stronger dark mocha aftertaste. Thinner body with moderate carbonation. The aftertaste is hoppier than darker malt, but it's a good blend.

 

stout looking, but the more you drink the better it gets

 

I’m not a huge black ale fan, so please ignore my rating. This is more for myself to keep track of beers than to make a strong suggestion. Xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

 

 

 

I'm fairly late on Great North's collaboration efforts, though I'm pretty sure the only other collab beer they've done and released to a wider audience is Moose Juice (a collaborative IPA with the Thirsty Moose Taphouse). This is a strong, hoppy dark beer under the name of Northern Nights and it's a collaboration between GN and New Realm Brewing in... Atlanta, Georgia? Well, that's a pretty long-range collab, isn't it?

This one pours a very deep brown color, bordering black quite closely. If held up to light, only the very topmost centimeters of the beer can be seen bearing some kind of brunette hue, and those just so happen to be the centimeters from which I can see slight streams of carbonation rise! The head is a pretty generous dollop of ecru foam with excellent legs and superb lace. Though this is a dark beer, it has quite a bit of character due to the intense head formation and retention. Nice stuff!

The nose here is quite heavy on the slightly fruity notes this style can bespeak, but it also has a mild coffee/caffè latte element to it upfront. Some research points to this being hopped with Cascade and Amarillo during the boil, with a dry-hop consisting of Falconers' Flight, Amarillo and Chinook hops. That's pretty damn old-school, leading this to remind me of something like Firestone's Wookie Jack, but with some extra roastiness and less spice. There's some strong grapefruit and pine in here, as well, with an intense dark chocolate backbone consisting of intense bitterness and cacao husk intensity.

On the tongue, this is roasty but also decadently sweet and chewy, with flavors ranging from pine resin to grapefruit to slight tropical fruit before the charred, dark chocolate-y bitter flavors take hold and crush everything else in the way. This beer has a very no-holds-barred approach that seems to lack balance, considering I start to taste some nice, complex tropical/citrusy flavors only to be essentially beaten into submission by intense hoppiness that does more harm than good. Like many other strong black IPAs, this leans on harsher dark malt flavors which hurt its overall drinkability and diminish its feel. It's fairly crisp, but the roastiness does nothing to support the FF or Chinook hops. I love both of these hop varietals dearly, to be honest, but this base beer seems to want very badly to be an imperial porter.

Therefore, we come to the elephant-in-the-room when it comes to black IPAs... is this just a hoppy porter? Is it an IPA with a weirdly inappropriate malt character? This is for certain an unbalanced creation, in my opinion; I enjoyed drinking it, but the malt character really outweighed the hops here, making for a disjointed drinking experience. The feel is on-par if we're looking at it in terms of a "Cascadian Dark Ale" or American Black Ale, but the flavor is really much more porter-like than I feel comfortable with in this style. Overall, a tough one to rate... but if there were to be some work done to the recipe, this could really shine in all its matte-black incandescence.

 

Enjoying a 12oz pour today during Happy Hour at The Nashua Garden. Small snifter serving for $4.00.

Brew is a dark, opaque, dense black. Has a beige head which is very fine and thin, rim-clinging. Lacing is not top shelf yet still nice. Nose is a pleasing blend of roasty malts and rindy citrus. Has a medium body, with minimal prickle on the tongue.

I'm getting some roasty malts with a touch of choco to start. It's slightly on the bitter, dry side. Layered on top of that base is some pithy, citrussy hoppage, with a floral finish. Neither malt nor hops really stand out, but it's a tasty, middle of the road effort. Prosit!

4.06/5 rDev -3.6%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

1985

Can from the source.
Deep brown with ruby at the edges and a frothy creamy tan head that persists. Lots of resinous pine and light citrus against a light molasses, roasty chocolate maltiness. Damn good brew!

From a can dated 12/3/17 poured 12/19 into a stemmed Treehouse snifter. I love black IPAs so I'm grading on a curve, the hops and malt are really well balanced. Sampled with a fine frozen sausage egg breakfast sandwich microwaved to perfection and I think that's a near perfect pairing.

From a one pint can that was canned 12/3/17. Sampled on December 16, 2017.

The pour is a gorgeous looking dark brown to near black.

On the nose I pick up an array of characters including citrus, fruity, melon, and roasted dark malts.

The body is medium.

The taste seems to emphasize the malts more than the citrus, fruity notes but both are there with much vigor. A nice lingering bitterness at the finish.