Paranoid Black IPA
Brewsters Brewing Company & Restaurant - Eleventh Avenue

 

1L howler from the Century Park southside Edmonchuk location - apparently, this is a big, big seller - though I can't really complain about the friendly bartender there - he filled this sucker right to the very top! And hey, man - make a joke, and I will sigh, and you will laugh, and I will cry!

This beer pours pretty solid black abyss, but for some prominent basal red cola edges when pushed to the light, and one finger of puffy, very loosely foamy, and certainly bubbly beige head, which leaves some splendid melting ice shield lace around the glass as things quickly blow off.

It smells of well-roasted caramel malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, some free-range wet ashiness, an indistinct earthy vegetal character, sharp, and somewhat metallic black licorice, and some rather underwhelming piney and citrusy hop bitterness. The taste is semi-sweet, grainy and still very toasted caramel malt, a growing dark orchard fruitiness, waning milk chocolate notes, an equal to its olfactory presence anise edginess, more untethered ashy character, and still rather understated leafy, citrusy, and blended green forest floor detritus hop bitters.

The bubbles are pretty tame in their neutered from the start frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and mostly smooth, with just a bit of unwelcome ashy essence typically fucking up my experience right about now. It finishes off-dry, a lingering roasted caramel joint still putting a curb-stomp to the face of any aspirant IPA-esque hops.

Yeah, this isn't doing anything to make me recant my litany of previous vitriol towards this stillborn 'style', IMHO. Maybe the lack of overt IPA characteristics here make me forgive, to the extent of forgetting the last three letters of the name of this offering. Or perhaps, given that this is my second 'Paranoid' themed brew in the same number of weeks, I'm getting a sense that nothing here seems to really satisfy.