Murray's Ridiculoso
Murray's Craft Brewing Co.

This was the final beer of the night at Murray's hop-focused Sydney Craft Beer Week dinner. It was brewed with a large proportion of isohop, giving it a lab-tested bitterness far, far above what the human taste buds can justifiably sense. As with the other brews at the dinner, this was an experiment, and wildly divergent from their regular range. Hence, take my review with a grain of salt: it's not indicative of Murray's as a whole.

Pours a light orange colour, with a very heavy haze. Body is solid enough, which isn't unexpected. Head is a solid, slightly frothy yellow-white crown that leaves some patches of lace. Looks decent enough.

Nose is intensely spicy and hoppy, tending towards grassy and funky. Big, pithy lemon rind suggests freshness, before the organic brutality comes through, leaving funk, earth and stacks of grassy, oily, bitter-in-the-nose intensity. It's too much.

But wait! Did I say it was too much on the nose? Holy crap, this is even worse on the palate. Bitter. Bitter. Bitter. Did I say bitter? How about long, and lingering and bitter? Really, this tastes of nothing, and numbs your tongue while it's doing it. Isohop? Check! That's about it. It's stupid. It's unreasonable.

This was always going to be this way. This is pushing beer far beyond the boundaries of sense and reason into something that was always going to be unbalanced and nigh-on undrinkable. That was its goal, and it achieved it. But really, this is a stupid beer that I'm glad only gets to exist as a gimmick.

(Note: I'd probably put this below Mikkeller's 1000IBU, but below the 1000IBU Light—it has the intensity of both, but less balance than the 1000IBU. Fortunately, it provides a little bit more backing than the 1000IBU light...)