As a seasoned home brewer, I have a shortlist of go-to beer style favourites that I like to brew and quaff on the regular. As i’m sure this is true of most home brewers, it’s also part of the core impulse to brew beer at home in first place – outside of spending a small weekly fortune on tallboy cans of premium craft.

My shortlist is as follows: ales, IPAs (India Pale Ales) and stouts (especially during the winter season). One specific style that is rather scarce in the marketplace is the heavy-hitting, ‘Black IPA’, which I greatly enjoy and have more than dabbled in brewing.

Black IPA: a surprisingly wonderful flavor contradiction of a beer

The Black IPA

The Black IPA incorporates all of the trademark velvety, toasty, and malted flavours that are usually characteristic of stouts, while simultaneously exhibiting the rich, grapefruit-infused hoppy flavours that are critical to a good IPA. Given that both styles have a robust, distinctive flavour profile and are quite viscous in texture, blending the two in concert is a tricky but highly rewarding task. I imagine this style is scarce because many people enjoy one or the other – or sometimes both – but often not in the same glass like I do.

I’m speculating, of course, but I can count on one hand the number of Black IPAs I see on the shelves here in Ontario, Canada and among the few, Big Rig’s ‘Release the Hounds’ springs to mind first. Let’s review the short description provided on the back of their can as an example to build on for our own:

“Opaque and black in colour with a thick creamy head; look for aromas of cereal, and earthy hops, along with smoke and burnt sugar. The palate is intensely bitter and full with average carbonation; the bitterness is balanced by enticing molasses and fig flavours followed by a medium-length finish.”

Big Rig’s ‘Release The Hounds’ Black IPA

If you’re a cigar fan like me, can you imagine a better beer style to pair with an equally robust cigar? The Black IPA is arguably the perfect beer to enjoy with a cigar due to its complexities in both flavour and aroma, as well as the order that you’ll likely perceive those flavours and aromas when the blend is done just right. There’s even quite a bit of overlap in the language we use to describe both the libation and the cured tobacco.

Cigars pair exceptionally well with a Black IPA, especially those that are fuller in body

Though today’s beer market doesn’t seem to offer a ton of made-to-drink Black IPA, it sells the kits to go out and make them yourself, so let’s have at it!

The Black IPA incorporates all of the trademark velvety, toasty, and malted flavours that are usually characteristic of stouts, while simultaneously exhibiting the rich, grapefruit-infused hoppy flavours that are critical to a good IPA.“

The Process: Home Brewing A Black IPA

Essential Materials:

To home brew a Black IPA, you’ll need a 5 gallon bucket with a lid and a bubbler airlock. You will need some tubing, sanitizer and stirring and cleaning tools. Fret not: you can buy home brewing kits that have all of the aforementioned materials almost anywhere on the internet these days, including the big vendors like Amazon. My favorite is Ontario Beer Kegs. You’ll also need a big corn pot and cool place to ferment the beer where it’s about 19-21 C / 66-69 F. Finally, you’ll need a Black IPA Recipe Kit that you can buy at most on-line brewing supply stores. All of the above should run you about $150-200 CAD ($120-170 USD).

A home brew kit

As always when brewing at any scale, sterilization is the most important step. Clean everything thoroughly like it has COVID-19 on it – and I mean everything! This is the first and most important thing you will do in your pursuit of the DIY Black IPA. If the fermentation process gets even the slightest contaminate it will impact the brew and potentially ruin your beer.

Next, it’s time to do the boil. This is very easy to do, especially if you use a recipe kit that has a bag or container of liquid malt instead of a giant tea bag to boil your own grains (much more time-consuming and adds complexity). Follow the instructions in the kit for this process. Again, it’s pretty straight forward. With the Black IPA recipe kit, there will be a malt boil component and a hops boil component. You can do all of it on your stove at home (NOTE: I encourage you to do this when no one is around – and you should open all the windows – as with this style it’s particularly strong in smell and can linger around the house for a day or two even with your stove exhaust blower on full tilt).

Once the boil is done (this process is called ‘mashing’), remove the boiled beer (which is now called ‘the wort’) to your super-duper clean 5 gallon bucket that has been pre-filled with 3 gallons of filtered or spring water. Pour it in carefully, stirring it with a long sterilized instrument (likely provided with your beer making kit). Tear open the provided small packet of yeast powder, add it and then cap the bucket. Then move the bucket to the fermentation location and set-up the bubble airlock in the small hole at the top of the bucket (again, fret not: instructions for all of this will be provided in the recipe kit for you in even greater detail).

Beer to be: at the ‘wort’ stage

At this point, wait 14 days for your beer to ferment (as you keep brewing new batches, you’ll determine an exact amount of days that you personally prefer). After that, your beer is ready to be moved to a keg for carbonation with CO2. I use an old soda keg I bought on Kijiji and add CO2 from a filled container I bought from a local industrial gas supplier (Praxair Canada) which, by the way, totalled about $100.00. You’ll need a pressure-adjusting CO2 regulator with hose (which should be set to 10 PSI) to attach to the container to regulate the amount of CO2 it dispenses. You’ll also need to attach a dispenser hose to a beer tap spigot to the pop keg to dispense beer. In roughly 3-4 days time, you can start pulling pints of your homebrew with your pals and smoke stogies (if you’re a stogie kinda guy like m’self)!

When you get right down to it, it’s quite easy and achievable to brew one of the best and uncommon outlier styles of beer I know of. A unique style of beer that just happens to be an excellent match for a bold cigar (my personal favorite to pair it with is The Magic Toast by Alec Bradley). I hope you enjoy your black IPA as much as I do!

Recommended cigar pairing: Magic Toast by Alec Bradley

One more thing – make sure to blast “Homebrew” by the band 311 when you have buds over to enjoy your freshly brewed Black IPA beer. Cheers.

– Scott Hazelton