I Fear You've Underestimated the Dark Side

Party time on the Death Star

I hope everyone’s All Hallows Eve festivities were safe and memorable. I hope you had your fill of pumpkin ales and other spooky creations. I hope you got a lot of candy, and nobody called the cops.

October is over – November is here. Generally, November beer consists of the pumpkin beers left over from Hallowe’en and the beers you will pair with your Thanksgiving feast. Those are both perfectly legitimate ways to categorize your November beer drinking plans, but there are others, and since we've covered pumpkin beers ad nauseam and will get to Thanksgiving when we’re a little closer to the holiday, I propose a third option.

Dark beers.

A few years back, I wrote on the topic of dark beers, specifically to separate myth from reality and expose the shenanigans that BIG BEER marketing had managed to pull off regarding light versus dark beer. Now it’s time to further develop the idea of dark beer, with a focus on the total landscape of what dark beer is and can be.

Obviously, everyone knows about stouts. Stouts originated when the Irish decided to one-up the English by adding darker-roasted barley to the English porter ales to create a darker, stronger beer. Believe it or not, dry Irish stout (like Guinness) is only one type of stout porter ale. Other variations include sweet/milk stout, oatmeal stout, coffee stout, foreign extra stout, American stout, oyster stout and imperial Russian stout. Some breweries like to experiment with putting different fruit combinations into stouts, which sounds weird, but since stouts tend to have chocolate characteristics, blending fruit with them usually results in a dessert-like beer.

Look at that cloud!

The other style which usually comes to mind when thinking of dark beers is the porter ale – which is technically the same style as stout, but with less or slightly lighter grain in it. Porters were created during the Industrial Revolution in England and were a local favorite among the industrial workers of the day. Porters are divided into three approved categories: brown porter, robust porter and Baltic porter, with each getting progressively stronger. I've also seen imperial porters before, which of course would indicate that the brewer used more malts and hops than a Baltic porter allows for.

You may also encounter an English Brown Ale, which range from mild (as in not a lot of hops) to Southern English or London-style Brown, which are darker, sweeter and lower gravity than their northern cousins, to the third and strongest Northern English Brown Ale which are higher gravity, more hop-oriented and drier than the Londoner varieties. Nut brown ales generally fall into the third category as well.

If you leave the UK and travel to Germany, the dark beers move into the lager category. One such style of dark German lager that is a personal favorite is the Schwartzbier, or black lager. Schwartzbiers are a variation of a Munich-style Dunkel but with darker roasted-barley and a touch more hops. The hops are completely overwhelmed by the malt so the beer is sweet as opposed to bitter. They have a light body and are typically lower ABV so they are quite easy to drink.

In Belgium, they have the Belgian Dark Strong Ale, which isn't typically black like some of the others I've listed here, but they are dark, very rich, complex and very strong, bordering on dangerous. They can range up to 12% ABV and are generally quite full-bodied, depending on the brewery. Malt sweetness and alcohol dominate the flavor and aroma.

No... what do they say?

Here in the States, we've concocted a beer that is either called black IPA or Cascadian ale, depending on where you are. Essentially, this is a beer that is heavy in both hops and dark-roasted barley… think of either a hoppy stout or a dark IPA. They are usually sweeter than they are bitter and can either be modestly alcoholic or full-on face-melters.

Of course, the secret to all of this is the malt. If the ratio of dark-roasted barley to lighter grains is high, the beer will be dark. It can be any style of beer, though the forefathers had names for most of the dark applications of malt… and that’s why we have the BJCP style guide… so we brewers have something resembling standards by which to design our beers.

Don’t be afraid of dark beers. They may look menacing, but are generally sweeter than their lighter counterparts, and are not necessarily “bigger and full-bodied” the way you might assume they are. Now that it’s November and getting cold again, they can be a perfect way to stay warm and full of cheer.

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Cheers!