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We have a trivia question in order to register to prevent bots. If you have any issues with answering, contact us at cass@bartowel.com for help.
Introducing Light Mode! If you would like a Bar Towel social experience that isn't the traditional blue, you can now select Light Mode. Go to the User Control Panel and then Board Preferences, and select "Day Drinking" (Light Mode) from the My Board Style drop-down menu. You can always switch back to "Night Drinking" (Dark Mode). Enjoy!
India Ink Black Pale Ale
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- Seasoned Drinker
- Posts: 1486
- Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:24 pm
India Ink Black Pale Ale
A textbook Black IPA. The nose is pure West Coast hops, the taste is clean rich malt with some good roasty notes and a good hit again of those Oregon or Washington State hops.
None of the "worty" taste I recall from some Trafalgar products in years past.
Excellent work, don't pass it up.
Gary
P.S. Great name and label graphics, too.
None of the "worty" taste I recall from some Trafalgar products in years past.
Excellent work, don't pass it up.
Gary
P.S. Great name and label graphics, too.
Gary Gillman
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- Seasoned Drinker
- Posts: 1486
- Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:24 pm
I'm with Gary. Really liked this, the roastiness was just right. Maybe a little light on the carbonation, but definitely not flat. When you call em like you see em, you have to give credit to Trafalgar here for making a pretty decent beer!
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- Posts: 358
- Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:32 pm
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- Seasoned Drinker
- Posts: 1079
- Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:12 pm
- Location: Parkdale
I had a bottle last night that was ok, i mean no infection or anything and it tasted fairly decent. While trafalgar does make some pretty bad stuff I think most people go in thinking its going to be an infected disaster regardless if it is or not. I bet if you slapped a Flying Monkeys label on this beer people would be singing its praises and going nuts trying to find it.
It would be odd if we split the same bottle. And of all the aspects of a beer you can assess, I think carbonation is probably the least subjective. Mine had none. Yours did. Which speaks more to Trafalgar's quality control and lack of consistency than any personal bias we may have.G.M. Gillman wrote:Odd how experiences can differ. Mine had full carbonation, and was not watery in the least for a 5% beer. The roasty notes were there but not dominating, quite subtle in fact. Maybe I had a different bottling...? Or maybe just different subjectivity...
Anyway, it's beating a dead horse to Trafalgar bash, but I grabbed a bottle based on the original post in this thread and figured I'd chime in with contrasting opinion.
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- Seasoned Drinker
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- Beer Superstar
- Posts: 2009
- Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2004 7:00 pm
- Location: Toronto
Having a Flying Monkeys label, or Great Lakes or DDC label or any label from a brewery that consistently puts out well made beers and has reasonably high QC standards will definitely cause people to seek them out more than they would seek out brewers with reputations of having poor quality control and beers that are hit and miss. I definitely want the scene to grow and have a lot of options available to me from as many Ontario brewers as possible, but if I try a few different offerings from a brewery and they are, for the most part, either off or just not well made I'm going to move on and forget about them until such a time that the feedback is positive enough to try it again.PeenSteen wrote:I had a bottle last night that was ok, i mean no infection or anything and it tasted fairly decent. While trafalgar does make some pretty bad stuff I think most people go in thinking its going to be an infected disaster regardless if it is or not. I bet if you slapped a Flying Monkeys label on this beer people would be singing its praises and going nuts trying to find it.
People get psyched for releases from breweries who've earned our trust by making good products. When Spearhead puts out something new I'm going to be really pumped to try it as well because I liked their Hawaiian Style PA a lot, not because it's trendy to drink Spearhead.
I don't always drink beer ... because sometimes my friends win and we have to go to macro-only establishments.