Brains Craft Brewery 'Black Mountain'

One of the things I like most about the Brains Craft Brewery is the labels they use, nice cartoon style brewery set up depicted, and usually little unique characters or items added for each different beer, lovely little details have gone into them.

'Black Mountain' is described as a 'hoppy Black IPA' , 5% and as with all their bottles 330mls. I picked this one up at Wally's Deli in the Royal Arcade in Cardiff, paid £2.35. It was brewed in conjunction with the Craft Beer Youtube channel.

Poured pretty black but with a small head that went soon after the photo.
Nice medium body, little toffee aroma, and a little floral and spicy elements. It does not however give the 'explosion of hops' promised from the Amarillo, Pacifica, Citra, Summit and Apollo hops used. The 'coffee, liquorice and burnt toffee' is there but also quite muted.

Overall its an okay beer,but compared to other well known Black IPA's its a bit of a light weight.
Its been reviewed reasonably well on untappd on cask so I thought that perhaps it has lost some of that freshness in the bottle, but seeing as it was only available in late December in Brains pubs this bottle isn't that old really.

Otley Oxymoron

Oxymoron, a black IPA dry hopped to hell and delicious to boot!

When I first had this a few years ago at the Great Welsh festival it was my first BIPA, I wasn't totally sold on it but since then its a style I've enjoyed more and more, some great examples being from The Kernel brewery and Hardknott.
But I've also returned to the Oxymoron a few times since then, cask and bottle, and its become a real favourite of mine.

Excellent roasted malts but over the top pine and grapefruit burst out and up your nose tickling receptors.
Huge but balanced flavours.
The strong and dark sit beautifully with the bright, clean and striking hops.
Chocolate, roasted malts, grapefruit and pine singing, the bitterness has a great tartness to it.
5.5% abv.

Hardknott Code Black

I've been a bit hit and miss with Black IPA's so far, but scored a big fat hit here.

Hardknotts's Code Black is 5.6% abv, 500mls, and I handed over £3.29 for it. Although seen on the blogging merry-go-round alot I had not seen any bottles myself before, and I also got their Colonial Mayhem, the mild that weighs in at 8.1%!

Pours quite lively as you can see, lovely mocha head, an aroma that was sharp fruit and malts, some coffee. The body was thinner than I was expecting, but lovely tropical fruits, something that's burnt (if that makes sense), perhaps the coffee. The lightness moves round the mouth very well, and a long bitterness, although not a harsh one, carries on.

Hugely enjoyable.