Founders Dark Penance

The latest addition to the lineup of these Michigan beer gurus is a "black IPA."  For those not up to date on craft trends, the paradoxically named "black IPA" (short for "black India pale ale") is essentially they a stout-black beer as hoppy as an IPA.  Many are impossible to tell apart from IPA's when blindfolded and most in my experience have no stout/porter flavors at all, appearance be damned.  Sometimes they are called black IPA's, sometimes they are called "American black ales" and originally they were called "Cascadian dark ales;" This particular AmeriCascadian dark black IPA ale is close to 9% alcohol and brewed with a touch of mildly roasted wheat.

Dark Penance pours a dark ominous hue that is only barely transparent.  Foam is off-white, with only moderate retention.  However, the foam has excellent lacing.

The aroma contains huge pine resin, bordering on pungent.  It is very reminiscent of a Chinook dry-hopped IPA but not quite as earthy or dirty.  Only a hint of malt peeks through the hop assault, not enough to really specify the type.  I can comfortably say this doesn't smell like a stout.

The flavor profile explodes with the pungency of Chinook and a dash of hop resin.  Although there is a hint of dark malt flavor, nothing about this approaches the roasted flavors of a stout.  Dark Penance very much tastes like an IPA that happens to be dark.  Pretty intensely bitter, and not in a clean way.  The aftertaste is all IBU all the time, lingering for quite a while.  The texture is appropriately dry for a style of beer which zeroes in on hop flavors.



Overall, Dark Penance is one of the more brutally bitter beers I have had.  Pine resin and Chinook coat the mouth and decimate any hint of malt flavor, including sugar.  This one's only for the hardcore hophead, and the old-school kind of hophead to boot.  You won't find any of the tropical fruit flavors increasingly present in modern IPA.