Now this is how a Black IPA should be.
Black as pitch, a big bouffant of a head, a smell to die for and a taste so bitter it removes your gums.
Dalston Black smells of delicious juicy jelly sweets, Parma Violets, and bitter chocolate sexiness.
The flavour is pretty sexy too, with a black treacle heart full of espresso and chocolate stirred with a liquorice root over which the hops run rampant, ripping at you with fizzing sherbet coated swords of lemon, lime and grapefruit, knuckledusters fashioned from foam shrimp and tropical fruit chews, a little battery acid and a shed load of sharpened sapling wood switches.
And just when you think you’ve been given enough, this is a beer with a finish that’s miles long, it just goes on and on with its dry, fruity magic.
In a word, albeit a not very technical one, yum.