On this episode Dylon and I talk about a style of beer with no real rules... the black ale. A slightly hoppy, slightly malty beer style which acts as an open canvas for brewers to play with.

Black Ale

Wed, 8/25 11:10AM • 17:57

SPEAKERS

Connor Brekke, Dylan Schafer

Connor Brekke  00:10

Hello, everyone and welcome back to the Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics regarding alcohol. From specific beer styles, distillation, the brewing process, wine, spirits, and even a history of certain liquor laws. There's a fascinating world to explore. On this episode, we continue the taster series with a discussion about the black ale beer style. Joining me today is Dylan Schafer, owner of Dialectic Brewing Company here in Mandan, North Dakota. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to The Ombibulous.

Connor Brekke  00:52

 Welcome back, Dylan. I see you've got another darker style of ale for us today. 

Dylan Schafer  00:59

Yeah, I figured it's winter time. So we'll we'll stick with drinking some dark beers and tasting some dark beers for now. 

Connor Brekke  01:06

That sounds good to me. It's still technically winter. 

Dylan Schafer  01:09

Despite the weather It is a beautiful February day, but it's still February. So...

Connor Brekke  01:14

Yes

Dylan Schafer  01:15

Yeah, so today I brought our Stoop Dog black ale. First off the the beer does carry the name from my, a couple of my dogs actually. I have dogs that notoriously just love to lay out on the back porch. No matter the weather. No matter what time of year, the only thing they want to do is just lay out on the stoop. So, hence the stoop dog. One of them is a black lab too. So that's a little bit fitting. But as far as the beer goes, the first thing you'll notice is it is a quite dark beer. Darker than the wee heavy that we talked about on the last beer tasting. And it's got a little bit mellower head on it, not quite as big firm head on it. But it is a nice dark brown, little bit of a reddish hue to it. At a little bit lower light it does come off as just straight black as well. With this beer the color can be a little bit deceiving for a lot of people. Again, it looks like it's gonna be a big dark heavy beer. And it really isn't it's it's a fairly easy drinking beer for, for how dark and how malty it is. So in general, I just kind of want to address the the concept of a black ale. It's it's another one that's a little bit... arguable if it is an actual style or not. If you're familiar with the craft beer world, a lot of the times you'll see black IPAs or Cascadian dark ales. Those two are the same type of thing. It's it's basically a hoppy, dark beer. We did take a really similar approach with this. But when you see the Cascadian dark ales or the black IPAs, they're typically going to be that high Ibu. So high hop bitterness, high hop flavor, high hop aroma. And we took a little bit of different approach with this one. So being as the the New England IPAs, and the hazy IPAs have been ridiculously popular lately. The whole thing with