Blackstone Brewing Company - Session Player IPA

This session IPA from Blackstone pours a bright golden-copper color with good clarity and a robust head of fine-bubbled foam. On the nose, we picked up wonderfully bright citrus aromas with a little bit of everything: orange, tangerine, grapefruit, and even a touch of lemon & lime. Floral notes appear, too, along with a touch of pineapple and a hint of pine. Those hoppy notes also come through nicely on the palate with citrus juice and zest impressions tending towards orange, with a secondary touch of pine. Look for the malts to present a light note of underlying caramel along with a mostly clean pale malt character, offering plenty of backbone for the hops without getting in their way. Nicely balanced, this session IPA is on the light side of medium-bodied, with moderate hop bitterness drying things out nicely as it lingers in the finish with a touch of citrus zest. For pairing options, we'd recommend dishes which play off of the citrus notes. Lemon pepper chicken or shrimp skewers sound perfect to us. Cheers!

The history of Blackstone Brewing Company begins in 1994 with the opening of Blackstone Restaurant & Brewery on West End Avenue in Nashville, TN. Co-founders Kent Taylor and Stephanie Weins made an excellent, complementary team, with Stephanie managing the restaurant part of the business and Kent handling the brewing operations. Back in 1994, the craft beer renaissance was still in its opening stages, and visitors to the restaurant sometimes walked out when they realized there was no Bud Light on tap. But times change, and ultimately the restaurant became a fixture in the area, serving good food and good beer to Nashville residents and visitors for over two decades.

In 2011, Blackstone made the jump from brewpub to production brewery with the opening of their 15,000 sq. ft. brewhouse on Clifton Avenue. Featuring a German-designed 30-barrel brewing system and a bottling line, Blackstone Brewing Company's new facility gave them the ability to produce beer for retail sale throughout the region. Sadly, Stephanie passed away in 2014, and with restaurant management admittedly not his strong suit, Kent made the decision to close the original restaurant and focus all his attention on the new brewing company and its Taproom. In addition to great beer, visitors to the Taproom can enjoy good food from the "B-Stone Bus," a 1989 Ford school bus converted into a food bus (who needs a food truck when you can have a food bus!). For more info about Blackstone, visit them at blackstonebeer.com.