Holy carbonics, Batman! This one wanted out of the bottle so dearly, that it frothed and blew bubbles at me out the top as soon as i got the cap off. Swear i didn’t jostle it and uncapping was easy, not a fight. But then out of the bottle and in the glass, there’s not much head. I don’t know what’s going on with this beer from Hamburg Brewing. Very odd behavior for an IPA.
Oddness abounds. This smells hoppier than it tastes, tastes hoppier than the 55 IBU’s noted on the bottle, and there’s a tree growing in the middle of their “H”. I just don’t know what’s going on around here.
Anyway, we’re at 6.0% alk for this one made near Buffalo, and they claim 4 types of malt to make this beer, and i can tell you the taste of the beer behind the hops bears this out. An interesting mix of barleys at different stages of malthood, leaves some sweetness in the beer and an oatey finish at the end. Like a sour oat. Odd.
The hops are a quartet too: Chinook, Palisade, Ahtanum and Magnum (which is clearly compensating for something). Cloudy to the eye and they call it orange, but what it really is, is two-toned. But two-toned vertically, not horizontally like a normal liquid. Exceedingly odd. The color is certified pale along the sides of the glass, with an orangey core all the way down in the middle of the beer.
This whole beer is simply bizarre. Not troubling, just really weird. Very carbonated in the bottle and in my stomach (had me burping halfway during drinking it), but low head and no streamers of bubbly gases in the glass. Weird.
Honestly, normalcy worries me more than oddity, so don’t let my review scare you off. It’s tasty, and real-beer body which kicks the ass of all rice beers, and the bunches of hops work well here. Medium-strength and that’s nice, all together a fine beer. But nothing outstanding, despite being so weird from top to bottom. I’ll rate this at 6.6