Lagunitas Hop Stoopid

Lagunitas Hop Stoopid
Lagunitas Hop Stoopid

Well OK, there’s a slap to the back of your neck if you were in the race to be Hoppier Than Thou. Taking a different tack than their neighbors at Sierra Nevada, these folks at Lagunitas are messing around with hop extractives and adding that to the beer instead. And the result, in case you’re not puckered enough today, is an astounding 102 International Bitterness Units. One hundred and two. Yes. I didn’t even know the scale went over 100.

And just to keep all them IBU’s under control, the alk has to be high, in this case 8%. So now you know, why they call it Hop Stoopid. The blurb on the bottles says it’s “fermented on high” and yeah, that’s probably true too.

The beer itself? Good golden color with plenty of floaty things in there, which is a mystery, because the whole story (in tiny print on the side of the label) is about NOT using a mountain of actual leafy buddy hop cones so they don’t jam your equips when you get it out of the vat, like a sodden roof gutter in November.

The taste is pretty excellent, as i suspected it would be. Lagunitas is one of those breweries whose stuff is just too expensive for me, like $15 sixers and $24 12-packs, but i saw “102 IBU 4U” on the label and knew i had to splurge on a 22-oz jammer of this, lovingly known among the drinking class as a “double deuce”. But my regular glass is 18-oz so i can handle these things. Yes it’s a lager glass, that trapezoidal profile, but it’s fine for all beers and gives me an excuse to say trapezoidal once in a while.

The beer body is finely sturdy, this is an ale but not a pale ale, a good blend of malt-sweet and crunchy cereals. Professional head on this one, like Euro-style head on the beer, and then, of course, there’s all those devilish IBU’s. It’s hoppy, mi amigo. Like Jumpin’ Jesus on a Pogo Stick, it’s hoppy. Like a kangaroo on crack-a-roo, it’s hopping all over the goddamned place. I like it.

The hops are velvety brutal, carried on that big-beer taste and couched in a hi-alk delivery vehicle. A hammer of hops, truth told here for free. But nuttily enough this is not the Hoppiest of the Hopalongs on the range. Sierra Nevada’s Hop Hunter still reigns, even though i had prepared myself for the possibility that Hop Stoopid might dethrone the Hunter.

But it was not to be. The Double-H’s fresh-hop steam extraction turns out to be superior to whatever the Lagunitas Method is for making hop extract. I think the real difference might be Sierra Nevada’s HH uses the extract, and then makes hoppy beer as usual, only then they add the extract too. It seems like Lagunitas lets the extract do more of the work for them.

I think the Stoopid earns a rating of 8.8 for good tries at sooper hop, because the windmill is there, that’s why. But there are better hoppy beers at a lower price point than Lagunitas in this category, so that makes me less inclined to try another Lagunitas label in the future. Granted, what i had was likely brewed in Chicago, not in California, so maybe the quality stepped down at the contract brewery. Dunno, it’s not my job to know.

Magic Hat Mother Lager

Magic Hat's Mother Lager
Magic Hat Mother Lager

Bottle comes with their wry Vermont sense of humor, and their customarily dry Vermont beer. Good lager, with that mid-mouth effervescence you got with the fad of “dry” beers back in the 1980’s. At 5% alk this is a candidate for casual drinking, and the taste has that great savory feel of a lager, like they usually end up hopped into orange, rather than ales which get hopped into lemon.

Never had a bad Magic Hat, and today is any other day. Buy Mother Lager from Vermont SSR and they can get wheeled prosthetics for all their 3-legged cows. Production! More sour than bitter, with a real friendly malt texture. A real good lager, and i like lagers, so this comrade earns an 8.4 rating.

Smuttynose Shoals Pale Ale

Smuttynose's Shoals Pale Ale
Smuttynose’s Shoals Pale Ale

My third Slutty, erm, make that Smutty. This Pale Ale rated on the bottle as 5.3% alk, but noted next to the sell-by date, not on the label, so we can infer that different batches of the Shoals Pale Ale come out at different proofs. Not really very pale at all, rather dark in fact, but a curvy body and good hopped flavor. At 5.3% it won’t run you aground, but the weight is a bit too heavy to make it as a Summer beer.

Has good character, and i submit that this is what the whole craft beer movement is all about. You can really taste the grits and groats of the malt grains, the toasted sugars lingering on the sides of the tongue while the hops season the back of your mouth and top of your throat. You know how sometimes people refer to beer as “liquid bread”? This is what they mean.

I don’t like the name, i mean, shoals are something we all know should be avoided. But i do like the beer, much more than their Brown Dog Ale. This one is balanced in notes, and has me noddin me noggin with each sip. After the Brown Dog, i was wondering if Smuttynose’s success with Finestkind was just a one-hitter, but this ale reaffirms that they didn’t just get lucky with their IPA.

8.0 for this quaff but i deducted 0.5 for the bad name. Naw, just kidding, but really d00ds: change the name. This has got nothing to do with shoals. Will try to remember to find a sixer of this again later, when things turn cooler and the body craves heavier things inside and out, maybe round about late October.

CB Caged Alpha Monkey IPA

CB-CagedAlphaMonkeyIPA-8.4
CB’s Caged Alpha Monkey IPA

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.

Saranac American Pale Ale

Saranac-AmericanPaleAle-8.2
Saranac’s American Pale Ale

Hey that’s pretty good. And it’s a good idea too: why should all pale ales be Indian? Here in the Land Of Coca Cola, we know how to make beer, and damn good beer, though we can’t brew it red + white + blue, but we sure as hell can make it green for that great American holiday: St. Patrick’s Excuse For Drinking Excessively Day. So these genii at Saranac figured out that hopping up their regular ale makes it an IPA without the I. Not really pale, i mean it’s got a brown color more than a yellow, but the hoppy delish of an IPA is here in the APA, and with a fuller body than real pale ale.

The taste is fine, nothing outstanding, but that fuller body will definitely make me think about trying this again. It’s a meatier pale ale, and i like that. No idea how strong it is, but it didn’t slosh me. I’d give this one a 7.1, but it’s garnered a bump to 7.2 for being patriotic.

Looking back now, some months after writing this, it was the first one i tried of the heavier-body hard-hopped genre, and it turns out to be something i like very, very much. IP-Lagers, this APA, and a few others have a delicious beer body which can naturally better support harder hops. If i had known then, how fond i would grow of this style of beer, i would have given this a higher rating. So i just did, because i can: the American Pale Ale from Saranac gets a full point boost, up to 8.2.

Rohrbach Railroad Street IPA

Rohrbach-RRStIPA-8.5
Rohrbach’s RR Street IPA

This microbrewery is not as micro as it once was, a sizeable floorplan on Railroad Street in Rochester, the one in New York, not in Minnesota where the Mayo Clinic is. Thus, the name of their IPA. Available only in NY state as far as i know, since the can only has the NY5ยข deposit value on it. And finally, the Rohrbach beers come in 4-pack pint cans, or closer in to the brewery, i understand that they are also sold in 64-oz growlers.

That’s about all the info, since there’s no carton and very little data on the cans themselves. Don’t even know how strong this IPA is, but i can tell you from experience that this is no “session” ale. A fourpack of this obliterated me a few months ago when i wasn’t paying attention. Or i wasn’t paying respect, or what ever… i paid for it the next morning.

The basics are these: medium pale color, light effervescence, good piney nose when poured. Most of all, the major data point here, is that it tastes great. This has a solid beer body underneath the hops, and the hops are what they should be: a kumquat growing on a fir tree branch.

The proper tastes are all there, but the important thing is the balance of the body and the hops, and this crafty brewery has been around since 1991, practically ready for a flood of AARP mailings in beer years. Over that amount of time, you can’t help but become an expert at what you’re doing, and the Rohrbachers have done so.

So, some serious skills went into this IPA, and it comes out the other side of alchemy as liquid exhuberance. Couldn’t tell you what hop species they use, but the result is fine. Fine as in fine gold, not fine as in “ok fine.” I am definitely a fan of this IPA, and i used to buy it frequently before i started concentrating on strange and unusual hoppy beers to broaden my IPA horizons.

What to rate it? Damn, i don’t know. This is one of the first modern IPA’s i tried. Had a smattering of IPAs over the years, before they became a whole industrial segment of their own, and for several years i’d walk past an expanding indy beer section at stores and notice that everyone and their decrepit grandma was making an IPA now, and i rolled my eyes and walked past, and grabbed what i knew.

But things change, one of them is the general economy. As recovery washed away remorse and jobs started falling off the trees again, there came a week where there was enough money to try a nicer beer for a change. That was this beer, the one i’m reviewing right now. So in a sense, RR St. IPA is a sort of baseline by which i measure the modern crop of crafty IPA’s. But how do i rate it objectively, now that it’s a standard?

Well, compared to the elites and deletes i’ve tasted since, Rohrbach’s IPA holds up pretty good. The balance is skillful, the hops are assertive, and the body is quality. The price is good at $9 for 4×16, and once my journey across the IPA landscape runs its course, i’ll probably settle back into buying this one when i want an IPA. Just generally hiqual. So rating it? Oofda, say 8.5.

Genesee Bock

Genesee-Bock-8.0
Genesee Bock Beer

Mid January, that’s the last part of the Holiday Season for me, since that’s when Genny releases their annual bock beer. The beloved weed-chewing jumping goat on the garish green can makes the beer looks like it’s the cheapest nastiest thing in the world, but in fact this is the best thing Genesee makes, and it’s only on sale in Janauary and it sells until it’s gone. For another year. This time, the bock lasted until early March. I usually stock up and it lasts me through May.

Last year i had a few tucked away until November. This year there were three goatbeers hiding in the far corner of the fridge until July. Why the love? Bock is made from the unfermented sugary grainsludge which they scrape out of the vats once a year, and if there’s sugars, then you can enslave yeasts to make beer out of it.

Talk about a hearty beer body. This bock is thick and chewy, color dark and brooding, the sweet syrupy malt-mud concentrates dozens of runs of Genny’s standard beer, which is undrinkable on its own, into a fine melange of flavors which you just can’t achieve by freshly malted grains on their own. Sour, from the over-complete fermentation and some normal hopping. It’s really a masterpiece and anyone who tries it for the first time is shocked that a beer this tasty came from Genny.

The limited run certainly lends extra appreciation via anticipation, but it actually is good beer. I rate it a steady 8.0 for the weight and taste, and because it’s Genny most people won’t buy it, so the price remains pleasingly low.

Southern Tier Right O Way IPA

SouthernTier-RightOWayIPA-8.1
Southern Tier’s Right O Way IPA

Yet another IPA from the prolific people at Southern Tier, not too bad an attempt at the balance which Smuttynose has discovered. A darker aspect tells about heavier grains seared longer, the hops are clear and solid, and the sugars are also the lower notes on the scale, from a darker malt allowed to cook a deeper brown.

The heavier malts give this one a meatier taste in the mouth, and there’s some hints of toast playing off the sour hops, a nice touch. At 4.5% alcohol, this one is not going to toast your brain, and it’s refreshing in the way that old-tyme beer was refreshing, by being a meal where the water is bad and the workday is long. Have to give it an 8.1 for yumminess.

Southern Tier IPA

Southern Tier Brewing's IPA
Southern Tier Brewing’s IPA

The standard India Pale Ale from Southern Tier Brewing, the nose is crisp but weak, the taste brings more malt flavor than their “Live” ale. Both ales mention 4 malts and 4 hops on the label, but this one favors the grains over the cones. Still nicely hopped, just not sour-face hoppy.

A good rounded feel in the mouth, overall a better ale than the “Live” one, with the balance more on being a beer than being hoppier-than-thou. 7.0% alcohol here, so prolly not the best drink to relax on a hot day, but in New York you’re not melting on the porch for 9 months, only three. So low on hops, but nice real-beer taste.

The longer you sip it, the more lingering the taste of hops is, and i think this means they used pretty fresh hops. I’d call this one a nice round 8.0 for, well, well-roundedness.