Today’s beer is Bridgeport Dark Rain, a brew that they call “Black Pale Ale”.  Here’s how they describe it on the bottle:

“The Pacific Northwest’s rain is almost as famous as its beer. Dark Rain™, an intensely hopped yet surprisingly smooth black ale will shower your taste buds with roasted malt and chocolate flavors derived from black wheat and dark crystal malt. Enjoy the darkness.”

Here’s my caveat on “Black Pale Ale”.  Obviously, Bridgeport is aiming at a pale ale with dark malts in emulance of the Black IPA aka India Dark Ale style that is all the rage. For my part, I think this is more difficulty to do with pale ale. An IPA is a hoppy beer indeed; you can throw in some dark malts and get an interesting beer that still keeps some IPA character. Pale ales are more restrained in the hops department (although Dark Rain has an impressive 60 IBUs) and lighter in body. Dark Rain has an alcohol content of 5.6% by volume, for example. So in my mind a Black Pale Ale runs the risk of ending up a lot like robust porter.

Anyway, let’s give the beer a whirl.

Bridgeport Dark Rain Black Pale Ale pours to a jet black color with a thick creamy tan head formation and a roasted coffee nose laced with piney hops. The beer has good Brussels lace from start to finish.  There’s a lot of roasty dark malt upfront, along with coffee and chocolate notes and a hint of fruit. The hops soon take over, very resiny and piney and in the finish, very bitter. There’s a sharp roasted barley bitterness here, too. The whole affair lingers long, dry, and roasty for some time after sipping.

I do like this beer very much, it reminds me of a hoppy porter or almost a black IPA in all reality. A bit too hoppy, I think, to be a Black Pale Ale, if such a thing is even possible. I am not getting much Black Pale Ale character. Hedonistically, this is still a treat and a true bargain at $7.99 a six-pack. I’ll give an “A” for effort, and style this as a Black Pale Ale since the brewery calls it such. We’ll see how many others follow suit.