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And then, there were four.
Curry and Durant taking on Harden and Paul. King James still terrorizing the Eastern Conference. So as the NBA playoffs enter a hopefully more competitive stage, who will rise to great heights and earn the GOAT?
At least it isn’t the damn Pelicans. To that I will toast this new IPA from Mikkeller SD.
The second of two IPA releases from Los Angeles Ale Works has a kitten in a spacesuit. Not driving a Tesla though.
This IPA pours a yellowish orange color with a bright orange and melon aroma. Very soft and pleasant. Fruit forward but with a really good kick of hop bitterness that sticks around. Doesn’t taste like 7.5% at all.
IPA by British writer Roger Protz is a bit of split personality. The first 1/2 is loaded with interesting tidbits of brewing and more specifically hop facts such as:
only the female hop is used in brewing. You learn about the history in Britain and I was digging it. And I was looking forward to him bringing us up to (or fairly close to) modern IPA times.
But then the book turns into a survey of IPA’s from different sections of the world. And while it is instructive to be presented with other nations take on the popular style, the pace just slows down as you go from beer review to beer review and I kept wishing that Protz had stuck in the timeline and not moved out to the beer listing.
It should be said that the listing does have its merits in finding breweries that might be of interest. I certainly flagged a few on my Kindle app but that seems like a different book to me.
Overall, this book rates OK. Only because the second half was not what I wanted.
The Sauce doesn’t pour super hazy. Nice orange color. I tasted this beer and more from Lord Hobo for the first time on draft (at Barbara’s at the Brewery) and preferred Glorious more. I love the can design the verticality and font is cool. The IPA has that pillowy hop smell. A certain fuzziness. Boom Sauce tasted better in the can but is still feels as if it has road wear to it. A little butter undercurrent runs throughts. Maybe the hype has led to too high expectations.
You may have heard, elsewhere or here, that Epic Brewing is overseeing Santa Barbara’s Telegraph Brewing and that IPA was going to be in store for them.
And here it comes….
Here is the press release description, “West Swell is brewed with excessive amounts of late addition Citra and Simcoe hops, then further dry hopped with a combination of Centennial, Simcoe, and Citra. The result is a bright blast of juicy, citrus flavors and tropical aromas.”
The beer will start on draft before moving to 22oz bombers and then in May, 12oz cans. Why no 16oz can stop is a good question.
Smog City is refreshing the label look for their two flagship ales. Making their Sheep a little tougher and tapping the hop for all of the lupulin it has inside. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing this in my ‘fridge.
Thanks to a generous BevMo gift card, I impulsively picked up the newest 4-Way IPA variety box from Sierra Nevada. Two of the beers are and have been available in the past, so let’s see which of the two newbies are my favorite…
…and that honor goes to the coffee IPA by a nose. This was not a battle of the best however. I was not wowed by Know Good. There was some piney resonance there but the flavors just didn’t leap up. Kind of restrained and like many other IPA’s out there.
The Middle Ground had that extra ingredient which fueled it to a more two dimensional (close to 3D) mix of flavors and the coffee note also did not overly diminish the hops either.
Now I have to re-check out the Flipside Red IPA.
Did anyone at Golden Road talk to their Dilly Dilly? Why is their a Def Leppard collaboration beer in 2018?
Must be some hysteria to cause this type of Armageddon it. Also, whoever designed this faux-clip art Pyromania label should be taken back to art school. I am a guilty appreciator of the DL music (not the hair), I mean this song and video is awesome. The outro riff is great.
But this is 2018. Get yourself Kendrick Lamar or T-Swift Budweiser. Brew up a Hefe or do a Pour Some (Belgian Candi) Sugar on Me Dubbel.
I just Kindle’d this book from British beer éminence grise Roger Protz charts the rise-fall and big rise of IPA from a non-hazy perspective with the basic title of IPA and the much more instructive “A Legend in Our Time” sub-title.
A review to come later this month.
Sierra Nevada does not stop when it comes to hops. And thanks to Sunset Beer Co. selling singles, it is easy to cheaply taste test among their offerings which I did in November as well. Let’s check the two out…
Hazy Little Thing
Seems pretty clear to me. The aroma just popped out when the can was opened. Lots of orange soda taste here. Soft pillowy texture. Candy-esque
Hop Bullet DIPA
“Spring Seasonal” in shelves in December? Pours a clear orange color. Sharp and medium bitter. Grassy and a skosh dank. Some orange notes.
This is a hard call. Both beers are as advertised. The way-too-early “Spring” moniker is minus points but the HLT is just too tilted to a candy flavor that is a bit much for me. I say go old school and bite the bullet.