Let it out of the cage! Good entry from the oddly named Craftbrewers Craft Brewery, which is redundant redundant, in the tiny sleepy town of Honeoye Falls, where the eponymous falls are only about 10 feet tall and 20 wide, but there’s a restaurant where you can dine while looking at the falls, such as they are.
But nothing sleepy about this enraged silverback chained inside a bottle. No stupid fruits added, but there’s a natural fruity aftertaste from the hops which lopes around your mouth for a while, swinging from an old tire. This one doesn’t go bananas on the hops, it doesn’t pucker your pout with bittery blues, but still has a fine upstanding hoppy element, proving that evolution has not left this monkey skuffing knuckles with the rest of the troupe.
The balance is the key, for any IPA which does not try and join the race to Hoppier Than Thou. This one is smarter than that, crafting a brew which is a hearty drinkable beer balanced with that punch of hop the kids love today. Alk content is an eyebrow-raising 6.5%, but not quite the enraged braincell killer that the bottle’s artwork would lead you to assume.
The longer that aftertaste sits in your mouth, the more it transitions from citrus to plums. I could drink this over again, and in fact i think i will have another one. A little too heavy for a Summer drink, both in terms of alk and body, but that leaves nine other months when this beer is entirely fitting.
A healthy 8.4 for this quaff, the 8 for a swarthy build in the pure-beer end of the equation, and the extra 0.4 for balancing strong hops yet not swamping the beer itself.