{"id":5513,"date":"2013-05-05T23:12:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-05T11:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=5513"},"modified":"2015-08-21T10:06:26","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T22:06:26","slug":"666-black-se7en-ipa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/05\/05\/666-black-se7en-ipa\/","title":{"rendered":"666 ‘Black Se7en’ IPA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"666<\/a>
666 ‘Black Se7en’ IPA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The days are just packed<\/em>. There’s a mixed-blessing over-abundance of wonderful beery stuff in my life at the moment; much of which I’d love to be writing about, but I’m finding \u2014 for the moment1<\/sup><\/a><\/a> \u2014 it’s all jostled up in my brain and forming a bit of a tangle. This happens from time to time, I’ve found, and is attributable to various causes which range from the everyday to the idiosyncratic. Back when I was a bartender, ranting and raving, armed with a beer and a keyboard, in the middle of the night, it was easier to navigate \u2014 partially because it seems I really\u00a0am<\/em> a nocturnal person attempting (with various levels of success) to live a day-walking life. As much as I love it, and as much as off-the-cuff rambling (whether praise or condemnation) about beer flows as freely as exhaling, I have found myself in mildly-daunted bordering-on-freaking-out mode a few times,2<\/sup><\/a><\/a> and thereby unusually quiet. Which doesn’t seem a very\u00a0me<\/em> thing to be\u00a0at all<\/em>, so enough of that. This online incarnation of my\u00a0Diary<\/em> actually started as a way to start my brain moving properly again \u2014 more about that<\/em>, another day \u2014 so we’re hopefully back on a well-worn path.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\"666<\/a>
666 ‘Black Se7en’ IPA tap badge (with six 7s)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I met this<\/em> beer last week, as we prepped for a Craft Beer College<\/a> tasting (at which I was co-hosting \u2014 so, you know, disclosures<\/a><\/em>) which included it as part of a run-down on the role of different malts in the making of craft beer. Graham<\/del>\u00a0Graeme Mahy, the man behind\u00a0666 Brewing<\/a>,4<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0is one of those insufficiently-sung (if not actually “unsung”) characters in the local industry, and his beers reputedly never last long on Hashigo’s taps. ‘Black Se7en’ leaps bodily down that numerological well<\/a><\/a> that brewers seem so attracted to, referencing not just the Pitt-Freeman movie wherein Kevin Spacey is the bad guy and there’s a severed head in a FedEx box,5<\/sup><\/a><\/a> but 7 hops, 7 malts, 7% ABV and 77 IBU. It’s a little belabored, especially when you learn that \u201c666\u201d itself<\/em> is a similar nod to Mahy’s June 1966 birthday, but the resulting beer is unarguably worthy.<\/p>\n

\"Sprig<\/a>
Sprig & Fern ‘Harvest Pilsner’ embargoed badge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I neglected to make any notes or take a photo of the glass I had on the night (since I was, you know, working), so I resolved to swing by Hashigo on my way to work the next day \u2014 which did mean committing to a pre-noon beer for the sake of these ramblings; the things I do in the name of research and completeness. It’d been yanked off the taps to clear the way for a Fresh Hop Friday tap takeover, but evidently I wasn’t alone in thinking it worth re-visiting, as Sam & Dave had emptied the line into a jug rather than down the drain. And \u2014 generally speaking, whatever the time of day \u2014 I do love a Black IPA, both as a consumable liquid and as an intellectual exercise. Beer styles are useful things, but reifying them and pretending they have any kind of actual independent existence and\/or any real stability over time is just madness and likely to turn you into some kind of pedantic trainspotting anorak \u2014 and, worse, diminish your enjoyment of tasty things. “Black IPA” is almost singularly capable of doing some peoples’ heads in \u2014 and this is the one that finally got to me, with all its aggravating deliciousness.<\/p>\n

Aggravating<\/em> because this really does make a nonsense of the idea of a Black IPA. There’s a lot6<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0to be said \/ pondered \/ argued about the style (such as it is); what it should be called, what its defining characters are \u2014 and whether it exists at all, or deserves to.\u00a0I’m perfectly happy with a world that contains both Hoppy Porter and Black IPA, and I’ve recently been convinced that “Cascadian Dark Ale” isn’t as daft a term as I initially thought. I like the Scrabble Bag Full Of Adjectives approach to beer style naming wherein brewers seem comfortable just throwing terms together in novel ways that are nonetheless capable of economically communicating their intent. Meanings evolve, concepts are recombined, and nothing is carved in stone. Beer is like that partially because\u00a0language is like that<\/em>.7<\/sup><\/a><\/a> So I think there can be Hoppy Porter which isn’t Black IPA, and vice versa; I’d see it as a matter of emphasis, and starting point \u2014\u00a0which<\/em> element you’re tweaking, which is your curveball adjective and which is your foundational noun. But ‘Black Se7en’ isn’t like that, it’s\u00a0merely-black<\/em> IPA, with a shameful lower-case b.<\/p>\n

\"666<\/a>
666 tap handle, with suitably-demonic back-lighting thanks to Hashigo’s shelves<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That’s because Black Se7en is apparently brewed with a surprisingly-contemptible product from Weyermann (a German malting company, and one of the world’s giant beer-ingredient providers) called \u201cSinamar\u00ae\u201d<\/a>. A dark roasted-malt extract, its sole reason for existing is to impart colour\u00a0without a traceable hint of flavour. Brewers have some clever tricks for minimising the extract of roasty flavours from malt \u2014 like throwing it in the mash tun at the last minute as the wort is run off \u2014 but this just seems like a bridge too far. That it touts the avoidance of additive-listing regulations and compliance with the (god-damn motherfucking) Reinheitsgebot<\/a> as advantages betrays the pointless sneakiness of it as mere food colouring<\/em>. Why not release a whole freakin’<\/em> rainbow of Se7ens \u2014 what was the point<\/em> of the blackness? Or is it some kind of very-devious post-modern meta-level commentary on the state of the “style”?<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this, I’ve probably ruined your chance to run a fair test, but if you can put a glass in front of someone without telling them how it’s made, it’d be\u00a0fascinating<\/em> to see what they make of it, and whether they report any flavour notes that you’d expect from darker malts. They\u00a0shouldn’t<\/em>, given the design, but I couldn’t help second-guessing what the hell was going on in my brain as I drank it. Perception is like that, of course, but the interestingness of the exercise couldn’t\u00a0quite<\/em> soothe my outrage at the thought of all that effort going to jump through hoops for mere colour and compliance with a “Purity Law” for which there exist no sufficiently-large scare-quotes<\/a>. It put me in mind of all the engineering effort poured in to making modern life, and particularly its gadgets, fit within ludicrously-strict readings of religious rules about the Sabbath<\/a>. There’s a\u00a0lot<\/em> to admire in the ingenuity, and a certain charm in the mindset, but it just seems like a tragic misapplication of cleverness.<\/p>\n

The beer’s\u00a0damn<\/em> good, though. And that<\/em> calmed me right down.<\/p>\n

\"Diary<\/a>
Diary II entry #2xx,8<\/sup><\/a><\/a> 666 ‘Black Se7en’ IPA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Original notes:<\/strong> 666 Black Se7en IPA 3\/5\/13 @ Hashigo, on my way to work. Had this for a CBC tasting last night, and it’s motivatingly interesting + delicious. Actual, literal Black IPA, in instructive ways. Some influence of the gdmfing RHGB. (7%, leftovers for Fresh Hop Friday.) So weird that this should be so worthy but philosophically annoying-but-fascinating. It’s gorgeous, IPA-aromatic, satisfyingly bitter, too-drinkable for 7% (especially at breakfast!), balanced + damn good. But… but… Why black? Why?<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>1:<\/strong> Where “the moment” = the last few months, admittedly. Let’s go with deep time<\/a>.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>2:<\/strong> Particularly, I’ll freely admit for the sake of brain-clearing, with the editorship of The Pursuit of Hoppiness<\/em>, which I inherited when Kate Jordan moved over to the Melb.. It’s a\u00a0damn fine<\/em> publication, and I’m excited to have a crack at it, but it’s been an oddly-intimidating thing to tackle, given its pedigree, its profile, and the fact that a\u00a0whole bunch<\/em> of people pour work into it. I’m very much accustomed to working on my own, in the dark. The transition’s proving tricky, but I’ll get there. (He says, as he hacks out a personal blog post for the sake of greasing the rusted cogs of his mind \u2014 and if you can’t air a\u00a0mea culpa<\/em> and a minor confessional in the footnotes of your own website, what the hell is the point of having one?)\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>3:<\/strong> An apt metaphor, since my\u00a0other<\/em> brain-cranking trick mostly involves hopping on my bike and going for a blat around some of Wellington’s many bays and up and over a few of its equally-many hills. The cycling-fanatic and craft-beer-nerd crossover is almost as strong, it turns out, as the beer-geek and geek-geek overlap which I’ve revelled in for years.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>4:<\/strong> The website’s run-down of their beers is depressingly out of date, but experience shows that this happens with\u00a0basically every brewery<\/em>, there being way too many items forever on the To Do list \u2014 a point beautifully lampooned by the in-progress page for Panhead<\/a>. Graham Mahy, however, earns all sorts of bonus points for using the word “plethora”<\/a>, something I’ve loved since\u00a0Three Amigos<\/em><\/a>. He’s also apparently the true creator of Moa’s original beer, now known as ‘Methode’ \u2014 which further suggests that they can continue to fuck\u00a0right off<\/em> with their incessant suggestion that Josh Scott is “the brewer”.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>5:<\/strong> Er, Spoiler Alert, I suppose. (Or maybe it’s a UPS box. I can’t recall.)\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>6:<\/strong> See \u2014 just for example and just from myself \u2014 the entries for Yeastie Boys ‘PKB’<\/a>, Deschutes ‘Hop in the Dark’<\/a>, Croucher ‘Patriot’<\/a>, Golden Ticket ‘Black Emperor’<\/a>, Funk Estate Black IPA<\/a>\u00a0(which seems to be my fullest exposition on the idea), and Left Coast ‘The Wedge’<\/a>. Close reading of those will probably reveal me even contradicting myself in my take on the phenomenon, but that’s kind of my point.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>7:<\/strong> In my favourite modern example, “peruse” is shifting from meaning reading\u00a0thoroughly<\/em> to mere\u00a0browsing<\/em>.a<\/sup> “Lager” comes from the German word for storing something away, but almost all modern lagers are brewed at breakneck speed<\/a>. “Stout” was once an adjective appended to a subset of porters, but has come to be seen as a noun for a separate category<\/a>; one of many kinds of non-porter ale.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n \u2014 a:<\/strong>\u00a0In a brilliant coincidence, I found an article on the point<\/a> which also<\/em> references Three Amigos<\/em>.<\/span>
\n<\/a>8:<\/strong> By which I mean two hundred and something<\/em>, I think. I’ve got a stack of coasters and Post-Its and such to transcribe back in to the actual\u00a0Diary<\/em>, so I’ve somewhat lost count.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The days are just packed. There’s a mixed-blessing over-abundance of wonderful beery stuff in my life at the moment; much of which I’d love to be writing about, but I’m finding \u2014 for the moment1 \u2014 it’s all jostled up in my brain and forming a bit of a tangle. This happens from time to … Continue reading 666 ‘Black Se7en’ IPA<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,14,12,54],"class_list":["post-5513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-pages","tag-nz","tag-pale-ale","tag-tasted-may-2013"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2208,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/03\/26\/golden-bear-black-magic\/","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":0},"title":"Golden Bear ‘Black Magic’","author":"Phil","date":"March 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The night before writing this up, I was going through the neglected second half of Diary One and getting it all scanned. I found my first mention of Golden Bear in the entry for Beervana 2009. It's hardly auspicious; a pale ale of theirs is down as the day's only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Golden Bear 'Black Magic' IPA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Golden-Bear-Black-Magic-IPA-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":767,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/16\/brew-moon-hophead-ipa\/","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":1},"title":"Brew Moon ‘Hophead’ IPA","author":"Phil","date":"September 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm still kicking myself that me and my friends didn't know about the Brew Moon Cafe when we were on our South Island roadtrip a few years ago. They're in the charming-enough little town of Amberly, in North Canterbury, and we stopped there (we stop a lot, on our roadtrips)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Brew Moon 'Hophead' IPA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Brew-Moon-Hophead-IPA-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4513,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/06\/left-coast-the-wedge\/","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":2},"title":"Left Coast ‘The Wedge’","author":"Phil","date":"July 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It appears I might have \"Black IPA\" on the brain. Or hoppy porter, at least \u2014 the question of whether the one is the other is an enjoyable piece of modern beer taxonomy for me to ponder as I have a nice glass of something-dark on a wintery evening. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Left Coast 'The Wedge'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Left-Coast-The-Wedge-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4476,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/03\/funk-estate-launch-black-ipa\/","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":3},"title":"Funk Estate Launch \/ Black IPA","author":"Phil","date":"July 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Tuesday, for the vast majority of four long years at the Malthouse, was my standing night off. Which is the kind of predictable-planning luxury that, in the bartending business, is quite a rarity indeed. They were originally granted so that I could go to pub trivia and eventually grew to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Funk Estate Black IPA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Funk-Estate-Black-IPA-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1155,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/12\/16\/townshend-%e2%80%98j-c-%e2%80%99-ipa\/","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":4},"title":"Townshend \u2018J.C.\u2019 IPA","author":"Phil","date":"December 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So yeah, our Christmas Offerings at work included a beer which had burnt pohutakawa1 as part of the process, and a beer named after Jesus for no readily-apparent reason. I just loved the irreverence of that. Of course, it didn't hurt that both beers were really rather lovely, in their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Townshend 'J.C.' IPA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Townshend-J.C.-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":901,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/10\/05\/thornbridge-halcyon-ipa\/","url_meta":{"origin":5513,"position":5},"title":"Thornbridge ‘Halcyon’ IPA","author":"Phil","date":"October 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting contrast against their 'Jaipur' IPA (and a worthy thing in itself), 'Halcyon' is a fresh-hopped IPA of higher strength but lighter body than usual. Its Best Before date had been set quite conservatively, to encourage people to drink up and enjoy it while that madly-fresh hoppy aroma was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Thornbridge 'Halcyon' IPA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Thornbridge-Halcyon-IPA-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5513"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17316,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5513\/revisions\/17316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}