A hissy bark? A whiny slither? What sound does the snakedog make? I think the Flying Dog brewers just tried to come up with the weirdest things from the bottom edge of their minds, just to see what illustration Ralph Steadman would come up with. And this one’s a doozy, comes with a poem too, best not repeated here where there might be kids reading.
The beer itself? An IPA of serious weight at 7.1% alk, color on the dark side of golden and the aroma of wheaty fruits. A sip tells it true: the malts are heavy here, and now i know why they smelled a little wheaty. This IPA lets the malts slide through the jungle of hops, by keeping the hops on the low side of face-punching.
Hops are still there of course, this being a real IPA, and they’re fully functional even if light: a bit of fruitiness but less sharp than citrus, bitter without being too piney, this is more of a spice bitter than an ascorbic bitter. But they’re lighter than many IPA’s and this lets a very full malt taste out of the cage.
Sweet, bright, grainy, with that unfruity bitter. An interesting brew fo shoo, dogg. Bought the full sixer of this for the Steadman art, think i may want to collect ’em all, but not sure if i’ll buy this beer again. The sturdy beer body is nice, but i do prefer something a little wilder on the hop side of the equation. A steady 7.1 rating here, up for competent brewing but down for the lower hops.