Cigar City Brewing Either (365 Day 237)

By scot in 365 Days of American Craft Beer, Beer on Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Cigar City Either

American craft beer continues to evolve with two of the newer concepts being cascadian dark ales and collaboration beers.

Cascadian dark ales are sometimes referred to as black ipas. This style is credited with being developed in the north-western United States. Basically it is a style that takes a base ipa and adds some type of dark malts (roasted, chocolate, carafa, etc.) for complexity and color. The beer will have a delicate dark richness from the malts that comes through which is then uber hopped with Cascade or similar hops from the north west. Delicious in my opinion.

Collaboration beers are ones in which multiple breweries get together to develop a recipe and possibly brew together, usually at one location or another. The collaboration can stretch more than two breweries but that is the usual.

Either by Cigar City Brewing is both of the above: a Black IPA and a collaboration beer between Cigar City of Florida, Hill Farmstead of Vermont, and Grassroots Brewing of Denmark.

Either is big and bold. In spite of the huge dose of hops this beer is all about the malt. If you had a sip without looking you would think it is an over-hopped stout, an imperial stout at that. Dark fruit, molasses, chocolates, roast, caramel, and host of other flavors and aromas come to together from the malt to give this a sweet backbone. Citrus hops are there to balance. The alcohol comes through a bit in the taste and along with the large amount of sugars makes it difficult to drink at times (my only complaint).

Overall an interesting beer that maybe went to far and became a stout and a big one at that. Guess what is the next beer. Enjoy!

Aroma: 9 (25%), Taste: 9 (25%), Look: 10 (15%), Drinkability: 6 (35%), Overall: 8.1

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