A brewery has challenged the ‘nonsensical’ brewers of so-called black IPAs with the release of its latest beer.
Eden Brewery, which is based near Penrith, Cumbria, has released The Embalmer, which is a dark beer with the flavour and characteristics associated with a pale ale. It is the latest in the brewery’s range of beers inspired by characters, quotes and events from the film Withnail and I.
The brewery describes The Embalmer as an NPA, or Not A Pale Ale, which it says is a backlash against beers described as ‘black pale ales’. Head brewer Jason Hill (pictured) insists that anyone talking about black IPA is talking nonsense.
He said: “There seems to have been a bit of a glut of these beers recently, which call themselves black IPAs. We don’t want to be overly pedantic, but we thought we would poke a little bit of fun at the expense of the pedlars of these beers, which may be very nice, but their names just deny sense.
“A black IPA fundamentally cannot exist. Pale means pale and black is the opposite. What people actually mean by the phrase is that they have made a dark beer that has the flavour and strength associated with an IPA. This may be many wondrous things, but an IPA it is not.
“The Embalmer — which is the latest in our Withnail and I range and is inspired by a famous piece of dialogue in the film — is made with American Chinook, Cascade and Eldorado [hops] and dry hopped for extra flavour. We could call it a black IPA, but we don’t because that’s impossible.”
