Black IPAs are dead? Why?

Why wastes money and resources on something a good many either doesn't know about or doesn't like? Outside of Stone I can't think of one that was really good, the worst examples were awful.

 

The style uses debittered dark malt along w/the traditional IPA ingredients-- which contributes more than color to the style. I never thought of my favorite CDAs as just IPAs w/color.

 

I enjoy the roasty bitter piney characteristics of a good black IPA - it's kind of the anti-NEIPA. So I can see why it lost popularity due to the new generation of craft drinkers turned off by any bitterness in beer. Reminds me to badger my local brewery to make their wonderful version again.

 

It was always oxymoron but I think the real reason is that periodically breweries sort through their portfolio and thin out what is not selling and make more of what is.

 

I don't think Black IPAs really mesh. This could be why it never really stuck. It was something new and people probably wanted to partake.

I just had one (given to me) from Lancaster Brewing Company, which was pretty good for the style. Still wouldn't go out of my way to get one. I just think the flavors are all over the place with them.

 

Yeah, it's too bad. The Pine Tar Incident was my favorite of El Segundo's brews. I think they'd make a good winter seasonal.

 

I actually enjoy the fact they are not running wild with them. It is not a style I drink a ton of but a style I enjoy as a switch up. With all the hype over juicy IPAs and all its nice to crack open a black IPA and go against the grain of the in crowd. Plus in the winter months it works more for me anyway.
Cheers

 

Black IPA aka (American) Black Ale aka Cascadian Dark Ale

 

Never understood the hate for the style (maybe because I loved them). I suppose the mashup of two styles doesn't work for some people.

Hop in The Dark, Wookey Jack, Nightimte, Epitome, Black Racer were/are great.

In my mind, the reason they never got big was because outside of Stone and FW (and Lagunitas now) no one was really pushing them nationally. Was it because it was a minority that enjoyed them? Maybe, but was that because they never had a good one?

I always thought they would had been on-par (popularity-wise) with Gose. Guess I was wrong!

Oh well, still plenty of other good beer out there (and still some Black Ales popping up locally)

 

I had one the other day at a brewery. Definitely not dead, but the style sounds better than the beers. They usually disappoint.

 

Spot on. Black IPAs are doubly challenging to people with limited palates for beers. They're offensive to both the crowd that says, "I don't like hoppy beers" (usually referring to the dry, bitter, or piney expressions of hops) and the crowd that says, "I don't like dark beers" (often objecting to roasted malts).

With the influx of new, mostly young entrants into the craft beer hobby in the last few years, and the sudden burst of craft breweries into markets that previously had few, more accessible and sweeter beers have surged in popularity. Most notably among these is the New England IPA, which removes the aspects of the IPA that long turned off so many craft beer customers and replaces them with sweet, juicy flavors that are familiar outside of beer and sit well with inexperienced palates.

Thus, I do see the Black IPA and the NEIPA as opposing trends, and, unsurprisingly, the one that appeals to the mass market has won out. Personally, I'd love to see a resurgence in the Black IPA style, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Still have 3 in my fridge. Maybe it's because I'm a Libra and I can't decide between an IPA and a stout/porter sometimes. I love them...especially with pot roast, stews, and yes, Doritos.
But yeah, they have turned more seasonal than stable year-round offerings.

 

Black IPA is one of a million examples of the herd mentality of the craft beer industry. A couple breweries have success with a style, that style becomes the sexy new thing that everyone has to have in their lineup, and within a few years of that, everyone is sick of the style and it dies down.

That Paste list of stouts that's being discussed elsewhere on the board is a great current example of this. Coffee stouts used to be a fun twist on the style you'd see every now and then, but within the last few years it's gone crazy, everyone has rushed to get one in their lineup, and it's practically the only kind of stout you can find. And within a few more years, people will get burnt out on them and we'll be wondering what happened to all those coffee stouts that just came out. Oh, and Gose too.

 

If one of these black IPAs also had a roasty character, I'll agree it was nasty. But a good dark beer which has been highly hopped and is not roasty can be a good beer if the hops are done right.

 

Personally I love black IPAs but there were more misses than there were hits. FW Wookey Jack and Stone Sublimely Self Righteous were among the few greats that come to mind. I know i'm going to get a lot of flack for it but Lagunitas Nighttime just isn't robust enough which brings me to why i think the style faded. Its because the style is so divisive. Love it or hate it. Nighttime was pretty middle of the road compared to SSSR which is why I think its still around.

The "newer" coffee IPAs are another discussion

 

Oh it was definitely alive for a while even if that period was to brief to suit me. I had my first case with the Stone 11th Anniversary (later reintroduced as Sublimely Self Righteous Ale) and following that case of Stone for three years in a row, I would order a case of the Victory seasonal version as part of my regular rotation. Then sales and the faddish part of its popularity began to decline to the point they were no longer selling well enough to continue making them (thereby leaving some of us as jilted lovers).

 

Maybe they are nasty to you, but they are very kind and enjoyable to me.

 

I'm sure appearance plays a bigger role than I am giving it credit for, but once it's in the glass, aroma, taste and feel are all that rally matter.

For a lot of people that look may be enough to keep them away.

 

Lots of bad examples of the style stopped it from getting staying power. Astringent bitterness from roasted malts along with bitterness from hops was a bad clash of flavors. At my last brewery, our black IPA was easily the most requested beer in the taproom, but the last year we brewed it as a seasonal, we produced 90 BBL and ended up buying back or destroying about 60 BBL. in he same year, we produced 180 BBL each of Porter, Pils, and Oktoberfest as seasonals and we sold out too soon before the season was over.

 

When it comes to the complexity of understanding human social behavior (whether it be involved with beer or other things) and the causal things involved in such changes, "herd mentality" is one of the most misleading oversimplifications ever.