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 the New England IPAs is they are a lower bitterness IPA, so you get all the flavor and aroma of those hops, but not all the bitterness, the harsh bitterness to go with it. And that was kind of the approach that we took with a black ale.

Connor Brekke 03:36

As I'm sipping on it, because we each have our own, I...there's a huge difference. Well, I don't want to say a huge difference, but the we heavy, you can lift it up to your nose, smell it, you do not really get that hop at all... this one you do, it's not overly powering like, you know, a regular IPA, but it's definitely there. You definitely get that floral of it. But then you also get the characteristics of the we heavy like it's a darker maltier... with the lighting, of course it will change because it looks dark in one situation. And I made the comment earlier that it's kind of Burgundy in our current lighting situation, but still really beautiful carmely color complex tastes that's really good.

Dylan Schafer 04:25

And it's, again, it's it's another one of our beers too, that I that I think has quite a bit of complexity it is I would consider it to be fairly hot forward despite being a dark beer with a substantial malt character. It is pretty hot forward on the flavor aroma. But you do still get some of those richer malt characteristics that chocolate that little bit of carmel and toffee and some of those richer malt characteristics. And then the hop character really, really shines through the second you take a sip or even Get it up to your nose, you'll start noticing that hop character. And for this one, we do use some really, really classic US hop varietals. This is all Centennial for bittering, and then all Cascade for late edition hops. Realistically, there's not very much in there for the for the bittering hops, because it is only about 20 IBUs. So it drinks as a lot hoppier than 20 IBUs but again, you don't get that quite as harsh bitterness of the IPAs in there. And the cascade as the late addition, it gives you some really nice kind of light Piney notes, a little bit of citrus, grapefruit, stuff like that. A little herbal note to it as well.... herbal kind of floral note to it. And it's Yeah, it's a really, really fun style because it's, it's kind of the black sheep of a style as you put it earlier. And, you know, if you're gonna enter a beer judging competition with the black ale is not really a style in any competition, you may be able to enter it into a black IPA or cascadian dark ale, but you'll likely be faulted because it isn't bitter enough. You know, for the listeners who aren't familiar with the bitterness measurement on beer, it's going to be the scale of IBUs. And that stands for international bitterness unit. And that scale does technically go from zero to 1000. However, the human palate depending on the person, that human palate can't detect more than about 100 to 120. So say you drank a beer that was 400 IBUs, and you drink a beer that was 120 IBUs, the 400 IBU would not taste any bitter to a human. So a lot of the beers you see that are kind of on the high end of that IBU spectrum. Some of your American IPAs, your West Coast IPAs, they're gonna come in around that 75 to 100 IBU range. And this black ale comes in at way, way down there at 20 IBUs. And the funny thing with the IBU scale is, it's indicative of the hop bitterness, it's not going to really tell you much about the hop character. So to put it in perspective, when we were drinking, the wee heavy, the wee heavy is right around 36 to 40 IBUs, but actually has a lot more hoppy bitterness than the black ale does. But as we mentioned, you get no hop character out of the wee heavy at all. And you really don't get any bitterness out of the wee heavy at all, on the wee heavy has that, you know, that nice rich malt character to kind of mask some of that bitterness and keep it restrained. This not having quite as much of that malt character is really going to let that 20 IBUs and that hot flavor and aroma shine through to be the showcase of the beer. And again, the malt side of it is pretty much very, very light additions of dark malt to give it color, and just a little bit of complexity. So you'll you'll get some hints of kind of coffee and chocolate in there. But for the most part, those hops will quickly take over the palate.

Connor Brekke 08:21

Yeah, it's... it definitely hits you, but like I say, it wasn't it's not like a normal IPA, where that's pretty much all you get. You definitely get the maltiness of this. And I really enjoy that. It's kind of like the best of both worlds. It's like a hybrid beer kind of. You always get those.... you have the people who are like, super IPA. It's like "I wanted the max bitterness." So they want the triple IPAs. And you know, I think this is kind of a best of both worlds. Really.

Dylan Schafer 08:51

I agree. I mean, it's like you took a porter and an IPA. And you took all the great things you love about a porter and all the great things you love about an IPA, and then got rid of the stuff you don't like so much. And that's what you're left with. And it's it's kind of funny too, because despite being heavily hopped beer in a pretty hop forward beer. I have a lot of customers who notoriously will not touch hoppy beer. They avoid IPAs and stuff like it's the plague. But they seem to really really love thisbeer.

Connor Brekke 09:24

And one of those customers was me I'm still trying to get into IPAs...but I will, I will admit that I have not been a hoppy person. But this this one's definitely helping me find my hot wings, I guess.

Dylan Schafer 09:37

Yeah, it's and I like it too... the hops are not really sharp hops. You know, they're, they give you some really, really soft, palatable bitterness instead of that sharp bitey bitterness. And again, just nice subtle notes of grapefruit and pine and a little bit of a floral character in there.

Connor Brekke 09:57

I suppose the nice thing about this is since it's not really an official style, the sky is kind of limit.

Dylan Schafer 10:04

It is exactly and so you can, you know, if you're brewing a black a quote unquote black Ale, I mean, I've seen other companies market their black ales and they brew them with a heavy dose of cold pressed coffee or aged on coffee beans. You can do them with even more late addition hops, you can make a black ale that has your 20 IBUs but doesn't have quite as much hot flavor and aromas. You're really left with a pretty wide range, being as it's not really a style kind of kind of falls in between styles in my mind. But and sometimes that's fun. You know, I do love brewing beers that have traditional style guidelines. We have quite a few on tap right now our Hefeweisen our Berliner Weisse things like those that have pretty strict style guidelines. And when I brew those styles, I keep pretty well to those style guidelines, especially those good historic recipes. But this year kind of left to do with whatever you want with it as a brewer and that's a lot of fun, too.

Connor Brekke 11:09

It's always nice to have a blank canvas to work with sometimes.

Dylan Schafer 11:12

It is yeah, you know, sometimes I, I love our Berliner vise and it's super, super popular sour beer. They're really really simple beers to brew. The you know being as the style guidelines call for 50% Pilsner malt and 50% wheat malt, you don't have a lot of room to play with your malt bill on it. And then you know, the Rhythm Rug is absolutely... that's our Berliner Weisse.. sorry, that Berliner Weisse is not a hoppy beer by any means, you know, you're only going to see it at nine to 10 IBUs, and no perceivable hop flavor at all. So again, you really don't have much to play around with their, you got a nice lightweight beer with a clean lactic sour... that's at. This you can just play so much more with and you can mix up your hop varietals of a black ale. So instead of getting that piney citrus character, you could use some of the newer age hops, where you really draw those tropical fruits and those stone fruits and stuff like that. And I think all that would go really, really well in that nice darker malt base beer.

Connor Brekke 12:22

Basically the mixtape of beer.

Dylan Schafer 12:24

Exactly. And I'm a sucker for a good mix tape, so...

Connor Brekke 12:27

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Dylan Schafer 12:29

Yeah, and this is, is another one of those beers too, that when you drink it, it is deceiving because you expect it to have, when you look at it, you expect a bigger body, and you know, something that's going to fill you up really quickly. But it's also one that you could sit and drink quite a few of and you're not going to be overly full or uncomfortable. I will say this, um, our version of it is 6.7%. So maybe you don't want to drink too many of them. But that's kind of another thing with it being an ambiguous style to is, realistically, no one could fault you if you brewed a black ale that was 4% alcohol. Or if you wanted to brew one that was 8% alcohol. Ours happens to you know, be a little on the higher side at almost seven. But still very, very drinkable. And, and that malt character does help to hide that alcohol as well. At least when I drink it, I wouldn't in my mind think that it's an almost 7% beer. I would I would peg it as "oh yeah, you know, drinks like a five, five and a half percent beer." That malt character is just enough to keep some of that booziness hidden in there.

Connor Brekke 13:38

Yeah, definitely goes down a lot... a lot smoother I would say. The wee have definitely you can feel it. It's... well it's wee heavy. It's from our previous episode. This one this one's a lot easier drinking I think.

Dylan Schafer 13:54

You know, and on those those we heavies and those higher gravity stouts and barley wines and stuff like that, you know, you can taste the alcohol warmth and you can feel the alcohol warmth. And this you really don't get that, you probably won't notice the alcohol until you're maybe two or three pints into it and go to stand up and walk to the restroom.

Connor Brekke 14:14

And at that point it's best to call taxi or Uber or somebody.

Connor Brekke 14:21

No, I definitely like this style just because it's a little more... open to artistic interpretation.

Dylan Schafer 14:29

And it's fun because we you know, in our first episode when we talked about that wee heavy, that one has a little bit of wiggle room on the style guidelines. And it's probably my favorite beer on our tap list. This has a lot of wiggle room on it style guidelines because there aren't style guidelines. And also one of my favorite beers on the menu. You usually when I have customers ask me what my recommendation is. Those are the two beers I list. I love the black ale and I love the we heavy. Don't get me wrong, there are customers that I point in another direction. If they're not keen on the darker beers or the hoppier beers, I'll point them elsewhere. But as far as my personal preference, definitely one of my top favorite beers is that black ale.

Connor Brekke 15:22

Well, I definitely like it quite a bit.

Dylan Schafer 15:24

We'll convert you to the hop side yet, Connor.

Connor Brekke 15:26

Oh, I'm slowly getting there. I'm trying. For listeners at home... I definitely go to breweries often. And I definitely... that's, I always get one I like... like, I always get something that I don't think like, because you don't know if you don't know.

Dylan Schafer 15:42

Exactly.

Connor Brekke 15:43

That's part of the fun of trying new stuff.

Dylan Schafer 15:45

Yeah, you're never going to know until you try it. And I mean, I I'm not gonna lie to you, when I first started drinking craft beer, I wouldn't touch the hoppy beers and the IPAs. I started with some darker malt forward stuff and really got into the sours. And it really wasn't until I started brewing beer that I started getting into the hoppy beer, there was something about that aroma when I added the hops to the boiling kettle and all you could just smell it all in that steam. Something about that aroma drew me into starting to drink some of the hoppier beers and I love all the other beer styles as well. But I do love me some hoppy beers.

Connor Brekke 16:26

And yes, we will definitely be touching up more on some of these other styles and future episodes. But, wrapping things up with this black ale... I would say it's a perfect middle ground. And if you're curious about it, check out your local liquor stores. Maybe you've got a brewery that does their take on a particular black ale or if you're local come on into dielectric and try their Stoop Dog.

Dylan Schafer 16:50

Yeah.

Connor Brekke 16:51

I'm gonna take my last sip here.

Dylan Schafer 16:53

Yeah, and again, I I actually just brewed another batch of this beer the other day. So we'll have it on tap for a while. So if you find yourself in Mandan, come on in and have a pint.

Dylan Schafer 17:03

Indeed, nice weather. Hopefully it lasts. So until next time... cheers.

Connor Brekke 17:14

The Ombibulous is made possible with Castos, giving creators the tools to connect with their audience and community. The music is courteous of Pond5. With over 25 million royalty free stock videos, music, photos, and sound effects, here's something for every creator. Today's content was recorded here at Dialectic Brewing Company in Mandan, North Dakota. I would like to thank Dylan Schafer for the use of his facility and time to create this episode. And of course, a big thanks to all our listeners for all of your support. Until next time, cheers