Cascadian dark ale: delicious...and seditious?
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  • Cascadian dark ale: delicious. . . and seditious?

While working on this week’s article about food trucks and taprooms, I sampled some great local brews. A few favorites, which unfortunately didn’t make it into the piece: Hilliard’s Original Singe, which is made with smoked beechwood malt and has a fantastic, mild campfire flavor; a spicy, citrusy imperial rye IPA from Reuben’s Brews; and Stoup’s wonderfully strong and smooth whiskey-barrel-aged imperial porter.

One beer really stood out, though, in part because it was entirely new to me: Populuxe’s Cinderblock CDA. It was dark and toasty, a bit sweet, unmistakably hoppy—as though a porter and an IPA had a baby. It was unlike anything I’d had before. I was told that CDA stood for Cascadian dark ale.

This past weekend I came across another CDA, this one called Dark Passage, at Naked City in Greenwood. It was darker and hoppier than the Cinderblock, but with the same intriguing combination of pine and chocolate flavors. I started nosing around and saw that there are quite a few CDAs on offer around town.

I had a lot of questions. First, what the hell is a Cascadian dark ale? Does “Cascadian” refer to Cascade hops, or is it a proud and vaguely seditious reference to our region of the Pacific Northwest? Is this a new thing?

I called Justin Gerardy, owner of the Central District’s Standard Brewing, who also makes his own CDA, for some answers. “Ah, Cascadian dark ale,” Gerardy said. “You’ve picked a good beer to ask questions about.”

“As far as I understand,” he continued, “what it is exactly is debatable.” Depending on whom you talk to, a Cascadian dark ale might be called a black IPA, an American black ale, or an Indian brown ale.

According to Gerardy, the story goes something like this: About 10 years ago, “some guy in Maine or one of those states” brewed something he called a black IPA. The idea was to get dark malt into an IPA—mostly for color—without it affecting the flavor. The IPA looked as black as a stout or porter, but otherwise remained unchanged. Gerardy seems to think it was brewed more “for trickery,” something beermakers would pour for their friends and say, “Hey! Close your eyes! It tastes just like an IPA!”

The black IPA never really caught on big, partly because all brewers were really doing was changing the color of a beer. The name didn’t help either, as people were quick to point out that it’s difficult to describe something as “pale” and “black” at the same time. People laughed at it, debated the style, and kept experimenting. Then, a few years ago, brewers in Portland and Seattle started making black IPAs in earnest, this time letting the dark malts actually impart their flavor on the IPAs. Out of regional pride, they called it Cascadian dark ale. The name has stuck—at least in these parts, where the beer’s popularity has been rising steadily.

“What makes a beer complex is a cascading roll of flavors,” says Gerardy, getting really excited. “For a CDA, I want big dark chocolate and a little coffee. I want this beer to roll through roasty, dry out, then leave room for hops on the finish. There should be bitterness, but it should still be smooth. The key is carving out a place for the hops to shine in a way that is balanced.”

For Standard’s CDA, Gerardy opts for Chinook hops (“I love that hop, it’s kind of an unsung hero”) for their rosemary and pine flavors. The characteristic IPA hoppiness is balanced with both malt and alcohol (Standard’s CDA clocks in at a hefty 9.3 percent. It is as dangerous as it is delicious.)

For more information on CDAs, Gerardy referred me to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) organization, which publishes beer style guidelines that are used throughout the industry and revised every few years. While reading an interview with BJCP president Gordon Strong from last year, I discovered that I’m not the only one with burning questions about CDAs:

How does the revision team plan to address the relatively ambiguous nature of IBA, Black IPA, and Cascadian Dark Ale, which some feel are three separate styles while others feel are the same style?

The current plan is to have an extensible Specialty IPA category that can encompass various beers, and then have write-ups on specific examples. We'll have a Black IPA write-up, as well as several others.

The debate continues.