Hey Tazio, What's in the Beer Meister?

It was a two-fer yesterday for D and D-prime during Learn to Homebrew Day: 1) brewing the Racer 5 IPA clone and 2) participating in a fermenter-to keg-transfer of the Cascadian Dark Ale.

The CDA beauty gently and successfully made the 3 foot journey from fermenter to keg and is now safe and sound, and resting comfortably in a 40 degree beer meister, atop a pillow of Amarillo and fresh Cascade flowers from D's garden, whilst absorbing 2.25 volumes of CO2 delivered at 11 psi.

More or less.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Final gravity predicted to be 1.010 measured out at 1.011.

Tasting to ensue tomorrow after work.

Cascadian Dark Ale it is

After pondering the various facets of this beer style and the varied naming conventions in popular usage, I've come to the conclusion that calling this beer a Black I.P.A. isn't quite right. Nor is India Black Ale a fitting moniker.

Consider: this beer's origins were in the Northwestern US (debatable, I know), and not related geographically in any way with India. Hence having India in it's name is only tangentially correct. (Both styles relying on fairly heavy use of hops in their makeup.)

Further isn't there an illogic of a beer being both black (or nearly so--let's call it very Dark) and having pale (as in India Pale Ale) in it's name?

So shouldn't we just call this Cascadian Dark Ale? I'm going to.

Now that that's settled, can't we all just sit down and enjoy a CDA?

And to further the Learn to Homebrew Day experience...

Tomorrow, we'll be kegging separately, a batch of Black I.P.A.

(Or India Black Ale [IBA], or Cascadian Dark Ale [CDA]--take your pick of names. No one seems to know what to call this beer.)