"Hang on, isn't that just a stout?" is the question we hear most often when someone's handed a black IPA on one of our tastings and clocks the colour before they've smelled or tasted a drop. It's a fair reaction — on paper, "black India Pale Ale" sounds like a contradiction, since IPA has spent the last fifteen years becoming synonymous with pale, hazy and citrussy. But black IPA is a real, deliberately engineered style, and once you understand the trick behind it, it makes a lot more sense than the name suggests. Here's what a black IPA actually is, where the style came from, how brewers pull off the paradox, and where you might catch one pouring in London.
So what actually is a black IPA?
A black IPA is an India Pale Ale brewed with a small proportion of dark, roasted malts added to the grain bill, giving it a deep brown-to-black colour, while everything else about how it's hopped and fermented stays true to IPA. That means the same late and dry hopping techniques, the same citrus, pine or tropical hop character, and the same firm bitterness you'd expect from a classic IPA — just poured into a glass that looks like it should taste of coffee and chocolate instead. The result is genuinely strange the first time you try it: your eyes tell you one thing, and your nose and palate tell you another, and for a second or two your brain isn't sure which to believe. Our guide to what IPA actually stands for covers the base style in full if you want the fundamentals before diving into this darker offshoot.
Crucially, a black IPA isn't a stout or a porter with extra hops bolted on. The brewing intent runs the other way: it starts as an IPA recipe, built around a specific hop character, and the dark malt is added carefully, in small amounts, purely to hit the right colour without dragging the beer's flavour away from hop-forward IPA territory and into roasted-malt territory.
Where the name "Cascadian Dark Ale" comes from
Before "black IPA" became the standard term, American brewers in the Pacific Northwest — the "Cascadia" region around Oregon and Washington State, named for the Cascade mountain range — called the style Cascadian Dark Ale, or CDA. Some of the brewers credited with developing the style in the late 1980s and 1990s, including Greg Noonan and later breweries like Deschutes and Stone, felt "black IPA" was simply a contradiction that confused drinkers, since India Pale Ale had always meant pale by definition. The regional name never fully caught on outside craft beer enthusiast circles, though, and "black IPA" became the dominant term as the style spread more widely through the US and then the UK from the early 2010s onwards — a case of the catchier, if less accurate, name winning out.
How brewers actually pull off the paradox
Making a beer that's both black and hop-forward without the roasted malt completely burying the hops is the real technical challenge of the style, and it comes down to a few deliberate choices:
- Small quantities of specialist dark malts — rather than the generous helpings of roasted barley a stout might use, black IPA recipes typically lean on carefully chosen dark malts such as Carafa Special or de-husked black malt, used in smaller amounts specifically to add colour with minimal harsh, ashy bitterness.
- Heavy late and dry hopping — exactly as you'd see in any modern IPA, hops are added late in the boil and again after fermentation to maximise aroma without stacking on even more bitterness from the malt.
- A restrained base malt bill — keeping the rest of the grain bill fairly clean and simple helps the hop character stand out against the dark colour rather than fighting a heavy, bready malt backbone.
- Careful balance of two bitterness sources — a black IPA gets bitterness from both hops and roasted malt, which is unusual among beer styles, so the brewer has to dial each one back slightly to stop the beer tasting muddled or harsh. Get it wrong and you end up with the "burnt rubber" character that gave the style a bad reputation among some drinkers a few years ago.
If you want the full picture of how any beer, dark or pale, actually comes together on the brewing side, our how is beer made guide walks through mashing, boiling, fermenting and conditioning in plain terms.
Black IPA vs stout vs porter: how to tell them apart
This is the comparison guests ask about most, so it's worth being specific. A stout or porter is built around roasted malt character as the main event, with hops playing more of a supporting, balancing role — our own stout vs porter guide goes into exactly how those two dark styles differ from each other. A black IPA flips that priority: hops lead, dark malt sits underneath as a backdrop rather than the headline flavour. In practice that usually means:
- Stout / porter: coffee, chocolate or toffee notes dominate; hop bitterness is present but secondary; often a fuller, sometimes creamy body.
- Black IPA: citrus, pine or tropical hop aroma dominates on the nose and upfront on the palate; a light roasted-malt note arrives more as a dry, slightly bitter finish than a main flavour; body is usually closer to a standard IPA than a stout.
Tasted side by side — which is genuinely the best way to understand the difference — a black IPA and a stout rarely get confused for long, even though they can look almost identical sitting next to each other on a bar. If you've already fallen for the hazier end of the IPA family, our hazy IPA explained guide is a useful companion piece, since black IPA and NEIPA sit at opposite ends of the same broad style, sharing a brewing lineage but delivering almost opposite drinking experiences.
Why black IPA fell out of the spotlight (and why it's worth seeking out)
Black IPA had a genuine moment in the early-to-mid 2010s, championed by American craft breweries and picked up enthusiastically by the first wave of UK independents. It's since settled into a smaller, more occasional niche rather than a tap-list regular, partly because the hazy IPA boom pulled a lot of brewing attention and tap space towards pale, juicy styles instead, and partly because a few poorly balanced early examples gave the style an unfair reputation for tasting burnt or muddled. That's a shame, because a well-made black IPA — hop-forward, properly balanced, without any harsh ashiness from the dark malt — is one of the more interesting things a brewery can put in a glass, and the drinkers who know the style tend to be genuinely enthusiastic about it rather than lukewarm.
It's not something you'll find on every taproom's core range, but independent London brewers do put one out from time to time as a seasonal or one-off release, often around autumn when darker beers generally get more attention. If dark, roasted styles interest you more broadly, our what is craft beer piece covers how niche styles like this fit into the wider independent brewing scene that keeps producing them despite never quite going mainstream.
Try one on the Bermondsey Beer Mile
We've been running tastings through Bermondsey's independent taprooms since 2014, and while black IPA isn't a style you'll find poured every single week, it's exactly the kind of beer that turns up as a rotating or seasonal tap along our route — and our guides know to flag it when it does. Our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour runs 2–3.5 hours through four taprooms in the railway arches for £49 per person, tastings included, meeting at Southwark Brewing Co, 46 Druid St. If cheese and cured meat alongside your tasting sounds better, our Cheese, Meat & Beer Tour (£65pp, Saturdays 12–2:30pm) is worth a look, and east Londoners can find us at the Hackney Wick Craft Beer Experience (£41.25pp, selected Saturdays) too.
All three tours work for private groups from six people up to 60 or more via our private and group tours page, which makes them a solid pick for a birthday, work social or any group day out built around trying styles you wouldn't normally come across on your own.
Our honest take
Black IPA is a genuinely strange, genuinely good style once a brewer gets the balance right — a beer that looks like it's going to taste of coffee and chocolate, then delivers a wall of citrus and pine hops instead, with just enough dark malt underneath to remind you it's not a straightforward pale IPA. It's niche rather than mainstream these days, which is exactly why it's worth asking about on a tasting rather than expecting to see it on every bar. A gift voucher for any of our tours, bought directly on our gift vouchers page, is delivered by email instantly and never expires — a solid present for anyone who'd enjoy hunting down beers like this with a guide who actually knows what's pouring.