Twenty-One Grams
Brouwerij De Molen

 

 

 

 

Poured at Corporate Brew and Draft.
A - pours amber with a ruby hue in the light. Small white bubbly head. Big lace.
S - big malty presence, bready biscuit, earthy, resiny hop presence.
T - follows the nose with a little alcohol booziness. Caramel malt comes through as well.
M - medium- feel, almost over carbonated.
O - malt forward IPA but definitely drinkable.

 

Rich, flavorful and solid beer with a great opening hops.

 

330ml bottle - cool take on a pseudo-scientific principle and sort of dated-seeming movie trope, i.e. adding 21 grams of hop per litre, according to the label.

This beer pours a rather dark, cloudy apricot amber colour, with a fistful of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some attractive limestone arch lace around the glass as it slowly ebbs away.

It smells of pungent orange, lemon, red grapefruit, and kiwi citrus notes, wispy, tweaked alcohol esters, crackery caramel malt, warmed toffee pudding, tropical melon, green pine resin, and a softly spicy, indistinct leafiness. The taste is bready caramel malt, biscuity toffee, mixed citrusy, grassy, leafy, and spicy hops, and a strong as sin booziness, one that should not be taken lightly.

The bubbles are fairly unobtrusive in their frothy meanderings, the body a decent medium weight for the style, and actually smooth at junctures, the alcohol not always on guard, as it were. It finishes on the sweet side, both the complex malt and bristling ABV elbowing themselves to the forefront, despite the lingering headiness of the hops.

Yeah, neat idea, appropriate enough follow-through, but, in the end, this is just too unfinished seeming - the alcohol too untethered, the malt and hops at odds, and not in the typically playful manner. My purported titular amount of soul suffers with each sip, I'm afraid.

 

Reading the label makes the mouth water uncontrollably, but i'd rather not rush into any opinions from the start. The whiff coming out of the bottle right after popping the cap really insists tho.
Hazy, amber, with a rather big off-white head, pretty compact, that isn't in any rush to go away. Sticks artfully to the glass, too.
Really nice hoppy smell, bringing the good kinds of DIPAs back into mind. There's lots of pine and tangerine up front, sweetie, melon, ripe pineapple, pink grapefruit, mango, maracuja, to summarize: great juicy fruit. Just a tiny bit of excess caramel sweetness tho covers up a bit of the dank leafy notes.
First sip is... a bit of a let-down. A mix of citrus and spicy grass in the start with a rather big bitterness from up front smashes all the nice tropical fruitiness, leaving just bits and pieces of some mango and pineapple. Spicy bitterness continues with grapefruit pith and kiwi seeds, mellowed down with a bit of caramel, but still there. Easy to detect rye in the sweet(ish) malt, too. Pine and big herbal (minty, crunchy) hops dominate, resinous and humongously bitter.
Aftertaste is hoppy, but the bitterness lingers like an Aspirin lodged in the throat and the fruitiness is still too subtle. Medium body, carbonation hand in hand with the spicy feel. As you drink it you get used a bit with the overall roughness, leaving room for some leafy dank notes to pop up and a bit more of the tropical Mosaic.
Expected more, to say the least. Just a bit of balance needed here to have a strong contender to heavies like Heady Topper or 90 Minute. Till then, good grade, sad face.