I enter each new brewery with hope. No use going to the new and uncharted without it. Most times the beer is fine or above. Some places have more off note beers than others but not every brewery can be fashioning killer beer.
After visiting Bruery Terreux and Bottle Logic in Anaheim, my beer traveler Richard and I walked to the nearby Hoparazzi Brewing.
We ordered up a flight to share and was presented with this:
I purposefully left out the ugliest beer that I have seen in a long time…
Not the worst looking taster tray but compared to the artful beer trays previously seen that day, this was a distant third in looks.
Which would not matter at all if the beer was great. But it was a precursor to the bad aromas and overall lack of care in the beers. For a place called Hoparazzi, you would expect a solid (at least) IPA. The Enlightened IPA which promised Mosaic and Citra delivered caramel and no discernible hops bitterness. And it was the best beer!
The Californication Kolsch started well enough but turned bad halfway through leaving a weird taste in my mouth. Richard suspected poor quality control since this style does not suffer faults well.
But the fruit beers were of a much worse character, just bad. Lemon Twist had a strange smell that was one of the most off putting aromas that I have had in years of beer drinking. La Tarte Granada with pomegranate was not only decidedly vomit-y in color but flat out tasted weird. I hardly ever rate a beer below 2 on Untappd. This beer was below 1.
I will readily admit that most breweries beer would pale compared to Bottle Logic and The Bruery but this was poorly made stuff. Three quarters of the beer purchased was left on the counter.
I would strongly suggest passing on Hoparazzi until such time as they clean up their overall game.