Cheech And Chong Black Pale Ale
Boiler Brewing Co.

loosely a black ipa, only medium bodied, but with a ton of grain character to it, deep special dark malts, roasted unmalted barley, chocolate malt, all with notes of bitter coffee, rich dark chocolate, wet tobacco, and a hint of smoke. very complex in the grain, and it might be enough to ferment it out with an english ale yeast or something, that would make a heck of a black ale right there, but they have taken it one step further by adding a whole lot of hops to it. a very wet and dank, leafy and grassy, slightly sticky and herbaceous mix of varietals, added late i am sure, and it gives it a real growing freshness, a cool contrast with the dark malt. we run into just a bit of bitterness double jeopardy here though, there is a lot of bitterness and sort of ashy char like bitter from the grain, and then to add all the high alpha hops, it seems a little much, especially when the beer comes up to temperature. still, i like the beer a lot, i appreciate that they took an aggressive and bold approach to the grain composition here, and its pretty different from other beers in its category.