A new beer style has been created! Wooo Hooo!
BYO talks about it in Marc Martin's article Birth of a New Style: Cascadian Dark Ale. I do not care much for the name, and apparently it has been "changed" to "American-Style India Black Ale". "American-Style India Black Ale" is a better name, but I do not know why they don't just call it what home-brewers have been calling it: Black IPA or Imperial Black IPA. The BJCP doesn't update its guidelines every year, but I suppose it will be category 10D whenever the next publish date comes around.
In case you are not a beer geek enough to follow the link above, but still care enough to know, the numbers around the new style are:
Color = 30+ SRM
Original gravity = 1.060–1.080
Final gravity = 1.010–1.016
Bitterness = 50–90 IBU
Alcohol by volume = 6.0–8.5%
The important distinguishing factor between a hoppy porter or stout is IPA-like hops in both flavor and aroma.
My Stone Soup IDA falls right into this new category, except I probably don't quite have a dark enough color, and I guess my FG is not quite low enough. Personally, I think my IDA looks black, so maybe my SRM calculation is off. I still consider mine in category. Of course, when I created Stone Soup, there was no "American-Style India Black Ale", so I just called it a Category 23: Specialty Beer . Now there are guidelines, I can adjust color and work on my attenuation to get things right in line. Although, perhaps, I would rather just keep it as is. It is SOOOOOO good.
I've been telling myself for quite some time that I need to brew up another Stone Soup batch, but now that I have a category to shoot for, I'll have to make the extra effort to "make it happen".
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