Tag: IPA

Damn those pesky torpedoes! The real Commodore Perry was full speed ahead about beating the English Navy and now let’s see what Great Lakes Brewing has tagged as his 21st Century legacy… ahh, an IPA, an English-origin beer. As the label says, how ironic.

Color is light golden, not much bubbling going on, and the aroma out of the glass seems hoppy, a bit, but also meaty, as in real meat. And the taste bears this out: it tastes like there’s roast beef in my beer. At 7.7% alk and 70 IBU’s, this ought to be a serious experience, but i just can’t get over the eau de au jus in this beer. Not kidding, tastes like someone let their grill drippings into a batch of beer.

The hops are not overpowering, because the beer body comes through quite well in this, and it’s a nice flavor of malts. There’s a little wheaty taste but mostly some mid-toast barley and a hint of corn even. With the overall meaty taste, i would almost expect some potato flavors in here to make it a balanced meal.

The hops are not as fierce as 70 IBU’s would make you think, but fully evident. More to the pine side of the cone than the fruit side, a hint of tongue-numbing attests to evergreen influence, and the more sips i get, the more the hops take over from the beer body. But there it is all the way through: that taste of beef. You know when you fry burgers in a skillet and each burger gets those gray beads of fat built up around the edge? Eat one of those, and that’s what the meatish taste is, in this here IPA.

Pretty odd to find burger lard in an IPA, but it’s not the terrible thing that you might imagine. The beer body is barleybread, and a touch of beef fat actually goes hand-in-glove with it. If you try this IPA, might wish to have a packet of ketchup at hand to make the flavor complete. Maybe some dill relish. Oh wait, i know what this taste is: Yorkshire pudding but with a barley dough instead of wheat dough.

So what have we learned? About Commodore Perry, next to nothing. But about the beer which culturally appropriates his name? When you have some friends over and do some BBQ’ing, this would be an excellent beer to provide. The aftertaste of Cmdr Perry IPA will make your burgers taste like a star spangled success, no matter how bad a grillmaster you may be.

Very interesting beer, and an IPA rating has to take into account the body, the hops and the balance. Balance is good here, hops are comfortable, and the malt body is solid enough to support everything else. Don’t think i would buy this for Beer Appreciation Night, but for a picnic? Hell yeah! Rating is a casual 7.3 for good balance but unexpected extra tastes.

OK, had some dentistry done today, so am hitting the assortment of hi-alk beers waiting in the fridge for review. Just did the Uinta Dubhe Imerial Black IPA, which is in fact a stout with “IPA” mysteriously slapped on the label, at 9.2% alcohol. Now let’s keep the imperial theme going with this one, NB’s Imperial IPA, nicknamed the Rampant, at a feral 8.5% alk.

Label has a crown overgrown with hop vines, so someone at New Belgium doesn’t understand that word “rampant”, but hey, public schools whatever, let’s move on. Color is tawny gold, small head and no bubbles eagerly reaching for the surface. Label claims it’s good on the nose, and shucks, they’re right. This has got one of the best aromas of an IPA yet tested. Not spiky pine or punchy citrus, but those mellower fruits, plum and peach, just as the label mentions peach, and there it is. Florals too, and we know that flowers don’t grow on pine trees, even though the label mentions pine as well.

The bubbles appear where your lips meet the liquid and swirl up from there, so they’ve got the carbonation locked in tight here, and it’s light but maybe that’s what “imperial” means when talking about beer? It did make me burp, so it’s not like this is flatter than a middleschool prom. One odd thing, the smell is better than the taste here. I could sniff this pint all day long, but there are some smells inside that don’t translate to the tongue.

The taste is veritably heavenly. I liked the NB Ranger IPA, and this is indeed a little more far-ranging than that. Still have some numbness from the novocaine, so will paste a mental post-it to pick this beer up again and make a more sober review. It deserves that, judging from my initial reaction, which is luv.

Damn, that taste is good. This might be the one which knocks off Sam Adams 48º Latitude from the Top Five IPA’s, but again, that serious decision will await a more sober review with all my nerve endings firing properly. Right now, i just appreciate the 8.5% alk. The taste is worldly, there’s that citrus fruit, but not a nostril-enlarging pucker. Here, it’s more general fruitiness, and yes there is that pine, but the undercurrent is berries and spice.

Cripes, this is one fine IPA. In fact, this may be a rare opportunity. Now i need to gather a bottle each of The Five and some of this Rampant, and do some fine-tooth testing. I’m going to give this a provisional rating of 9.1 on a par with higher into the 9’s. Potentially very high… i have not enjoyed an IPA this much for quite a while, and that’s not just the drugs talking.

Just as CB CraftBrewers had the whole monkey-themed lineup of beers, Ballast Point out in San Diego has all the fishes. Mostly ugly fish too, but this one isn’t as horrifying as the rest. Looks like some kind of tuna, but its eye is not really all that big. BP “Sculpin” IPA came highly recommended, but as with Lagunitas beers, also from California, the BP’s are fairly pricey. Luckily, found this Big Eye and the Sculpin in a pick-a-six rack, so can try ’em without investing a lot.

This 7.0% alk IPA is a healthful dark gold, and has that sewer-water attribute with thirty thousand little bits o’ grit suspended in liquid, but by now we realize that this is a great omen presaging a great IPA. Unfiltered means untamed taste. In this one, however, there is so much litter that it’s piling up on the seafloor in my pint glass as i write. Presume that the Big Eye needs a layer of sediment to support it’s primary prey, the hopworm.

Not much info on the label at all, so have to go on taste alone with this fish. Nasal appreciation is lively, with tart-fruits and florals, and strangley, a hint of provolone. Hey, who knows? At an early age i learned that a chunk of Cheez Wiz on a hook works just as fine as any worm. Carbonation is pretty low on this one, a small amout of CO2 bite but nearly no head nor effervescing.

The taste is sweet, hops lower than the smell would advertise, and the floaty specks do tell the story right: the full flavor of beer swims here. Those hops which do come forward are the jaunty kind, more plum than grapefruit, if this was a cherry it would be the pie kind, not the snacking kind. Yum, with the Big Eye not trying to hop your schnozz off, the fuller malt flavor is free to bring out the blossom notes of hi-hopping. Almost a perfumy taste in there.

I like the taste, even though this is not what i look for in an IPA. I look for an astringtent that would pucker a lizard, but that’s not what this Charlie Tuna is about. This is a neat package of beer+hops, self-contained and not referrent to anyone else. Getting toward a tangerine taste. But the sediment did pile up and the final gulp was rather chewy.

Not too bad, glad i tried one bottle and glad i didn’t have to shell out 16 clams for a full sixer. If you try it, drink fast or swirl now and then, lest the last swig be oatmeal. Rating 7.6 for the sedate hopping, up for the solid beer body, down for the pricing.

At first one eyebrow raised over the name of this IPA, oh those kids today, but then realized that “blaze” is also a word for a hiking trail marker painted on a tree, so we’re not doing the double-entendre thing here, not even a single-entendre, since there’s a silhouette of a hiker on the label and the brewery’s slogan is “Blaze A Happy Trail.” The green is referring to hops, not some other kind of green which might or might not blaze. I think.

But the bottle is full of helpful info, like the alk%, 6.5, and the IBU’s therein, 60, which is high, high, high, d0000d whoah. And it waxes poetic about a “lupulin landscape” of resin… hey waitaminnit here, i thought we were talking about hiking? Nicely, Long Trail Brewing (of Vermont) also lists the hops they stuffed in here: Chinook, Equinox, Columbus and Mosaic.

Color is nearly amber, dark-gold with that orangey core, and it’s cloudy like a Vermont dawn, with nearly no carbonation evident when looking from the outside. The nostrils flame open at a rush of hopitude, the label says “pine, resin and tropical fruit.” I don’t know why so many beers claim to be “tropical” when i have never tasted papaya or mango in any of them, i suppose it just sounds good when some copywriter is sitting around blazing. So to speak.

The fact remains, this IPA has one of the strongest hop aromas i’ve smelt, but will the taste live up? Well, yes and no. This is hoppy, like a cricket up a jackrabbit’s ass. So hoppy that there’s an element of salt in the flavor, and as an entrant in the Hoppier Than Thou race, this one is on the leaderboard. Not wearing the yellow jersey, but within striking distance. Woot, this has got a pucker in its pocket, the tropical fruit here is the lime, and the rest of the hop complex is pine, like you’ve got a notion to walk up to a marked tree on the trail and lick the blaze right off the bark.

The beer body… uh, is there one? All i can taste is not 59 but a full sixty IBU’s in here. Let me sip a few small fast ones and see if i can find it. No, i really can’t. This must be beer, but the malts have all gone to the woods. Stunning accomplishment on the hops side of the equation, really outstanding blend of the four cone types used, but the beer body is in hibernation. This is the first beer where i truly can’t pick out any of the flavors of the grains used to make it. Assume there were some, i just can’t… uhhm what was i talking about?

As said, the hopmix here is exemplary. If you’re watching that race, to Hoppier-than-thou Mountain, then this is an IPA you want to get into the hand not holding your walking stick. If you’re seeking balance at the summit, then this is not your IPA. If Long Trail Brewing could put this hop melange into a beer that has beer in it, then we’d be talking about gold medals. They should hike a couple states East to Maine and ask the Smuttynose people how to do it, or better yet, share the Green Blaze hop recipe with the Smuttys.

Fantastic hops, but the balance is obliterated. How to put a rating on that? Darn, i don’t know. One side of the equation is a 9.9, the other is a 2.1 so i have to take the easy way out and average the pair, for an even 6.0. With a more foundational beer body, this could have been a masterpiece. So let’s rate it a 6.0 but with an asterisk.

Not much info on the bottle, might have been more on the carton, but i got this one off a pick-a-six rack. All it says is that this stuff is “brick kettle brewed since 1996”. First of all, a happy 25th to the Davidson brothers next year, and second of all, is there really such a thing as a kettle made out of bricks? Also says “Original Recipe”, 12 oz, and it’s from Glens Falls in NY, and i may be wrong, but that might be the real town that was the inspiration for Bedford Falls in “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Or maybe it was Seneca Falls? I forget.

But on to the beer: a nice smell out of the bottle, pleasing orangey color, the same as many of my fave hoppy beers, so they didn’t skimp on the malts at the Davidson house. Sure enough, when i got my tongue wrapped around this, or vice versa, it’s making me happy because there’s a heartier beer body than many other IPA’s. No idea how strong it is, and that’s kinda a relief: what you don’t know, you can’t fear. Or maybe vice versa, sometimes.

Hmmm, the balance is a tiny bit off, but in the opposite way of most IPA’s. Here, the body is a little more assertive than usual, but no offense to the hops in this one, they are very large themselves. As a whole package, i think we have a winner here. No idea if it took them all 20 years to get it right or if it was hi-qual right from the first brick kettle-full, but today, this is a very good IPA.

Yeah, after more sips i stand by the assertion above: this is a small deviation from a perfect balance of beer/hops but in a good direction, for my tastes at least. Citrus hop flavors, the meaty beer leads them into a berry flavor. At the back of the mouth the taste is roasty and toasty, which most IPA’s, even good ones, tend to drown out with massive hopping. There is a little bitter taste which is not hops, must be from the grain, and that’s a distraction.

The texture and flavor are great, solid body and steady hopping which could go a touch higher, overall a competent IPA but not award winning. Rating this at 7.5 for the good body, subtractions for the extraneous bitter and missing balance.

OK, that’s an odd one. Name is Kuka IPA, the subtitle is “ale brewed with maca root.” Made by the Andean Brewing Co., in Blauvelt New York, certainly in the foothills of that part of New York bordering Peru. Right? I didn’t even know what maca root was, but the Wikipedia says it was found at “the Meseta of BomBom close to Junin Lake” in 1843. Riiiight, just outside the Bronx i’m sure. And then it says: “women had to be protected from the Inca warriors, as reportedly they became ambitiously virile from eating such quantities of maca.”

So this is America, so obviously we’ll put it into beer because, well because America. USA! USA! USA! The extra odd thing about this beer is that it’s gold-ish almost to amber, but it’s completely opaque. What it really looks like is fresh raw cider, but it smells like a very hopped IPA. So far so good, and so far, so odd.

The moment of taste: whoah, that’s really odd. There’s beer, there’s hops, but there’s something else in there, must be the maca, a bitter and leathery taste, like an old shoe that was worn while stomping radishes. The Inca thought it was a delicacy, but “studies have shown a very low acceptance of the particular maca taste in consumers when first exposed to it. Apparently, the taste is acquired,” meaning that if you already like radish shoes, then you’ll simply love maca.

Huh. More sips and my tongue’s able to separate out more of the beer and hop tastes to better isolate the maca. Slightly sweet, if you’ve ever eaten a raw plantain, then think of that. Or biting the white part of a leek. Huh, this is odd beer. Not terrible, but i think it might take a while to ‘acquire’ this taste. I can see why they tried this with an IPA, the strong hops are like an overcoat, masking the maca from indecent exposure. And trust me, they needed some whomping hops to do that.

The beer reports itself as 6.2% alk, probably a good idea in this case, not a bad thought to bump it up to 7.2% in v2.0 if that ever happens. It’s a physically thick beer, the last few drops came out of the bottle with more of a drab than a drip, and getting to the bottom of this glass it seems even thicker. Not sure if it’s my imagination, but my head is starting to feel a little funny here. It’s like i’m over-alert but it’s different than a caffeine or nicotine alertness. There’s no heart-rate bump and no fine-focused awareness like with caff or nick. It’s like a relaxed intentness, makes me feel like i want to breathe deeper and makes my feet fidgety.

OK, am going to set this review down for a quarter hour and try to figure out what exactly is going on here…

Wow, and i mean wow. Maca root is something real, unlike most goofy diet supplements. This was my first beer o’ the evening, and at 6.2% alcohol it shouldn’t have done this to me. Not exactly a 90-pound weakling here, and i have dranked beer before. I recall that the first beer in your life hits you with a hammer, but i am, let’s just say, “experienced”. I normally have a new beer for review before anything else in the day, freshly arrived at home, when my palate is clear. And 6.2% alk is not enough to make me swimmy. But this one did.

Not really drunk, but all squirelly. I feel the alk, which i shouldn’t. I feel calm but ready to go, tingly in the calves and mind rolling from thing to thing, with a strange kind of concentration but unable to groove on any one thing for long. Wonder if this is what ADHD feels like? Interferes with the ability to write, like so many words are just beyond the tip of my tongue.

Yeah, i can see what this does to me and extrapolate what “copious amounts of maca” might do to an Inca warrior. Totally can imagine running off into the jungle with a club, and if we don’t find the enemy, just might thud a few unlucky sloths on the noggin.

The aftertaste of this beer clings to the sides of the tongue, where the ‘bitter’ buds reside. The taste got better, as in less odd, as the glass emptied. But the psycho-physio effects are remarkable. Feel sped but without the nasty effects of normal upping compounds. Alas, don’t really feel “ambitiously virile” but then again i only had one bottle of this, lucky for the lady sloths.

Not sure how to rate this drink. It’s not really an IPA, just a delivery vehicle for maca. The taste is not great compared to real beer IPA’s, this might rate a 4 or 5 purely as a beer. Reading more on Wiki, maca contains “(1R,3S)-1-methyltetrahydro-carboline-3-carboxylic acid, a molecule which is reported to exert many activities on the central nervous system.” Damn slappy true there. Now i’m all cooked up so won’t bother reviewing another beer this evening, wouldn’t be able to be objective, and this should wear off by tomorrow. Hopefully.

What i can tell you is that there’s something going on inside a bottle of Kuka IPA, try it and judge for yourself. Holy crap, this beer is nutso. As a beer i’d rate it a 4.1 but as an interesting experience this gets an 8.1 so might as well split the diffy and call it at 6.1 …but don’t call that a low review, you’ll have to try this yourself.

At last, it’s time for the highly anticipated Sculpin. One ugly damned fish on the label, i think if i caught one i’d just lash my pole up and down on the deck until that nasty thing fell off the hook. Then i’d kick the squishy remains overboard. But the IPA named for the thing comes highly recommended. When i went looking for an answer to what a “session” IPA is, the Goog threw me to a website with small useful articles about all kinds of beer terms. And there, a short list of IPA’s, the ones that writer thought were top-notch.

Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA was on that list. So here is me, with a sculpin in my glass, at long last. Damned expensive, $15 for a six-pack, so had to wait until i found one on a pick-a-six rack. COlor is a shade dimmer than golden, and the noseful of grapefruit in the glass portends well here. There’s bubbles, nozzled out of nowhere at a few points inside the glass, so we know it’s carbonated, which will be a nice change from those Uinta beers.

And a sip o’ sculp… ooo, that’s nice. Creamy, hoppy, balanced beer body is not overwhelmed. A smidge of piney hops, taste is less fruity than the smell was, and the fruit notes are a little more sweet than tart. At 7.0% alk, this is not a minnow, but not a whale either. That sweetness makes the hops more floral than zesty, and make no mistake, the hops are center stage. The beer body lurks in the wake, not obliterated but not jumping out in front of the bowsprit.

This one has the “balance.” Body just sturdy enough to support hi-hopping, alcohol is just high enough to keep volatile oils squeezed from the hops in solution. Near the end of the glass, the hops turn more piney and the body peeks out a touch more. Not a Top Fiver, but a very concentrated attempt at making a great IPA. Easy to drink despite 7.0% and the flavors don’t overwhelm the experience. Mighty fine beer, better than BP’s Big Eye IPA, i’ll give this a respectable 8.5 for high hops and good balance.

Don’t know what a bine climber is, but a busy little can here with plenty of info, and we like that. Geek humor is always great too, and according to the label i am holding 3.02 x 10^-3 barrels of IPA. To the math-fearers, that’s .00302 of a barrel, and to the truly thick, that’s 12 fluid ounces. A can of beer. Don’t worry, just drink it.

They list out the malts used (2Row, Pilsener, Munich and wheat), and the hops (Columbus, Citra, Falconer’s Flight, and Cascade). IBU’s are at a healthy 44. Also has a SRM number, which is a mystery to me but this IPA has 3.9 of those, whatever they are. The one piece of info missing on the can is one of the crits: the alk content! But since this is a “session” IPA we can infer that it’s at 4.5% or so.

Actually, now that i think about it, a bine climber might be a hop plant. Not sure, but there’s a maybe there. Anyway, the color is roundabout gold-ish, with plenty of floaty specks in there, which is usually a great sign for an IPA. The aroma is plenty hoppy, pine and sharp fruity, with a hint of schnozzberries.

Now down to it: the drinking of the drink. Catches in my throat a little bit, this one wears its 44 IBU’s well, and it had better because the malts are clearly overshadowed here. According to Keegan, there’s some wheat in here, but i can’t pick it out. The hops are hard and heavy, and i like this blend’s taste. It’s got my fave, Cascade, and truthfully here, this is one of the hoppiest IPA’s i’ve ever had. This one gives Hop Stoopid and Hop Hunter a run for their money.

Being “session” and thus low-ish alcohol, this would be an ‘easy drinking’ beer if it wasn’t hopped to the gills. I can declare it a good Summer beer, with the tart and foresty hops leaving your mouth dry and salivatey, this would be refreshing on the back deck on an 85º evening. But i can’t imagine drinking more than 2 or 3 of these in a row, the hopsy-turvy attitude would get absurd fast.

So if you buy this, prepare to share. As the glass went lower, and my mouth grew accustomed to the full-on hopslaught, the malts, the beer’s body, started to peek out from under the gtreen curtain. I can at last tell that there’s wheat in here, and the pils, and the other grainy tastes must be the other 2 malts, which i know nothing about. For that matter, i’d never heard of Falconer’s Flight hops, but there it is on the can.

The beer body is light, and the hops are all erect, so this one doesn’t have great balance. If you’re on The Quest for Hoppier-Than-Thou, then you owe yourself a tonguewash with this IPA. They really do hop the hell out of it. Other than that notable, there’s not much to shout about. I’ll rate it 7.0 for the hop madness, without that it’d be 5-something.