Very few beer styles have a documented, agreed upon origin story. Most are the product of decades, or even centuries, of technological, agricultural, market, and tax issues. Their lineage, at the very least, is hardly traceable to a single source.

The Black India Pale Ale, funny as the name might be, is credited as the invention of an icon in Vermont Craft Beer, and the person who largely made our beer state the brew haven it is today: Greg Noonan (alongside Glenn Walter). All of us at Black Flannel have been impacted by Noonan’s legacy in some way or another. He was a founder of the Vermont Pub and Brewery, where he was one of the trailblazers for craft beer in the United States beginning in the late 80s. It would be hard to measure the impact Greg had on craft beer in the US, but if you ask any brewer who cut their teeth in the Vermont scene, they’ll point to him as the patron saint. Among the many ways he has inspired us, Noonan was a founder and friend of the Green Mountain Mashers, the local homebrew club where some of our brewers developed their passion and knowledge for beer. After he passed away in 2009, the club renamed their annual homebrew competition the Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition in his honor, and every year we still gather at the pub to raise a glass to Greg after the beers have been judged. We continue to be inspired by his dedication to educating people about craft beer, which is one of the reasons we’ve developed our education program (and this blog!).

In our posts on American IPA and Double IPA, we mentioned that an explosion of hop-forward beers carried our industry from the 1990s into the early years of this century. After IPA took hold of our noses and palates, brewers were interested in finding new and compelling ways to showcase the hops that were getting so much attention. Noonan brewed a beer that was black–typically a color associated with rich, malty, cocoa and roast forward stouts and porters–but still emphasized the fresh citrus and pine flavors from American hops. The style took hold, and brewers all over the country have tried their hand at the style on and off ever since. It’s admittedly a beer that’s gone in and out of favor with drinkers and brewers over the last several decades, but it’s a style we love, so we’ve been excited to see a lot more of them on tap lists recently.

You’ll find these beers labelled a few different things as brewers try to alleviate the confusion between “black” and “pale ale.” India Black Ale, American Black Ale, and Cascadian Dark Ale–named after the Cascade hop that drove much of the early IPA boom–are all used interchangeably to describe this style. We call ours a Black IPA because we like that this beer defies expectation. It seems both dark and deep and light and fresh, so the paradox in the name seems to fit. If you’ve never had one, it’s definitely worth checking out–there’s nothing else quite like it.