I wanted to make a stout that had less of the dry roast flavor (often described as "burnt" or "acrid") that is common in stouts. Stouts are one of my favorite styles of beers because of their full-bodied richness and the coffee and chocolate flavors. This beer tastes like we added coffee and chocolate to it, but those flavors are from the highly-kilned malts that also give it its opaque black color. The recipe started as a Foreign Extra Stout but after several iterations of the recipe it may have crossed the line into Porter territory. I consider it a Stout. It's named Black because it is black, black is one of my favorite colors, the Optimism logo is usually seen as yellow / orange on black and we used to have a Black Labrador named Ouzo ("He's a licker!") that I loved and who lived far too short a life, just like this beer in my glass.