London Fields Brewery was born in 2011 in Hackney and has a core range of beers that are wonderful including a pale ale, an IPA, a red and a couple of others. This American Black Ale is part of their Bootlegger Series and thus far in my beer drinking career is one of my favourite beers of all-time.
In recent months I’ve been getting into the darker stuff, the porters, the stouts and more so the black IPAs. This American Black Ale combines everything I love about the aforementioned styles of beer in one beer. It is the absolute dream. It is rich in flavour, dark in colour and has a serious hoppy kick to it. The idea behind Bootlegger Series is to create beers with alternative style using unusual ingredients. The American Black Ale has an American hops influence to it but then also reminds me of various porters I’ve tried.
The tasting notes suggest it has camera and chocolate notes to it, but like most porters, I can smell and taste coffee. If you can imagine drinking a black IPA mixed with a cold espresso then that’s what I’m getting. Of course it is dark in colour due to it being an American black ale. Now, design. I am a sucker for a fantastic label, I picked up a couple of bottles of this from Sourced Market a few months ago based on the label alone. It is slightly left-field to how London Fields usually market their beers, but that’s why I love it.
This is a limited beer that was released on November 18th 2013 so if you can track down a bottle you MUST buy it because there’s not that many floating around.