Black is back. Have you noticed the large assortment of black beers, particularly black IPAs, that are showing up on the shelves of your favorite beer store or tavern?

I'd say the black India Pale Ale style is now a full-blown trend. So far this winter, beer nuts in Boise have been able to quaff Rogue Mogul Madness, Laughing Dog's Dogzilla, Sockeye's Double Gnarly Imperial Black IPA and Widmer W'10. Deschutes and Alaskan have black IPAs coming to the market, and Stone Brewing will finally begin selling its genre-defining Sublimely Self Righteous Ale (SSRA) in Boise this spring. 

This is good news. Done correctly, I've found the black IPA to be a richer and more roasty malt experience than the regular IPAs, without sacrificing the hop bitterness and big piney and citrusy aromas so essential to the style.

I realize some craft beer enthusiasts don't like the style, and think it's a gimmick.

It's also kind of a cluster to determine where the style originated.

There is even a movement in the Pacific Northwest craft beer universe to rename the style and call them Cascadian dark beers.

The thinking is the style is derived from the more aggressive and hoppy American IPAs created by Oregon and Washington craft brewers, who live near the Cascade mountains, in the 1980s. This is kind of impossible to prove and just sounds like silly provincialism to me, but whatever.

The big news for me is finally being able to buy Stone's SSRA. It may not have been the first black IPA out there, but I believe it was the first kick-ass version to be distributed widely.

Where Stone goes stylistically, other brewers follow. Stone is from SoCal, and its beer was inspired by a black IPA style beer from Vermont - neither of which are in the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadian thing just doesn't work for me.

The SSRA was originally Stone's 11th Anniversary beer for 2007 - its annual one-and-done birthday beer.

The craft beer cognoscenti - and the Stone folks - loved the 11th so much they decided to make it part of their regular roster of beers, brewmaster Mitch Steele said. That has only happened once before, when the Stone 5th Anniversary beer became the much loved Ruination IPA.

Stone wasn't the first to brew a black IPA, but it may have been the first to bottle it for wide distribution, Steele said.

"I think we definitely helped popularize the style," he said. "We've been brewing it occasionally (since 2007), but now we are rolling it out full time. It's a beer near and dear my heart."

Steele said he was just about to be hired as Stone's head brewer in 2006 when he drank a black IPA style beer. It was at an extreme beer festival in Boston and created by Shaun Hill, a brewmaster from a place called the Shed in Vermont. Hill later told Steele his beer was influenced by Vermont craft brewing pioneer Greg Noonan.

Steele said he didn't want to recreate Hill's beer but left intrigued by the idea and style, which he felt Stone could deliver in a big and unique way.

Except that the first experiments weren't really working.

"I just thought it was an amazing concept," Steele said. "The problem I found with the black IPA was the dark malts you would normally use with a porter or stout weren't really working. The flavors were clashing instead of lifting each other up. The malt was too astringent for an IPA ... there was a conflict with the hops."

Steele had his breakthrough when he decided to try German dark malts normally used for schwarzbier, a dark lager style.

Steele said Stone owner Greg Koch wasn't sure about the style, but gave the go-ahead anyway. Three years later, the SSRA is so beloved it is part of the regular Stone rotation.

I fully expect to hear from people who disagree with my Stone theory and will tell me that something like Rogue's Skullsplitter Ale was the first genre-defining black IPA.

By dumb luck, I actually got to buy a bottle of the Skullsplitter - which was a very limited release and not currently brewed by Rogue - during a trip to the Oregon Coast in 2003. It was really good, kind of a dark version of the Brutal Bitter. But its reach was limited. The Rogue Web site says John Maier has been brewing Mogul Madness since 1991, but I don't remember that beer being very available over the last decade.

It's hard to tell who was first or best or any of that stuff, or why a certain style gets popular.

It just does. The Pixies, Hsker D, and other indie bands played in relative obscurity for years and all of a sudden Nirvana was the biggest thing since sliced bread. That's just the way it goes.

Patrick Orr: 373-6619.

Patrick Orr's beer column runs the first Friday of the month.