Nelson Imperial India Pale Ale
Mikkeller ApS

12 oz can pours murky deep golden orange colour with 2 fingers of dirty white head. Aroma is sweet malt with some indistinct sweet fruitiness, some sense of grape must. Taste is sweet floral to fruity grape/wine, grassy, with over ripe peach, apricot, mild piney hoppiness. Full mouthfeel with bit of lingering booziness. Flip flopped while drinking this but in end found quite enjoyable. Note this was aged a bit - perhaps a good thing.

330ml can - the last in a series of these new single-hopped DIPAs to arrive in Alberta last week.

This beer pours a murky, dark apricot amber colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly bubbly tan head, which leaves some random sticky and sudsy lace around the glass as it lazily sinks out of sight.

It smells of grainy and bready caramel malt, concentrated white grape juice, cotton candy, a mild earthy yeastiness, and fairly tame leafy, herbal, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, a lesser biscuity toffee thing, somewhat phenolic yeast, white wine lees, some muddled berry fruitiness, subtle mixed peppercorn notes, and more understated leafy, piney, and herbal verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly meek in its barely-there frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and generally smooth, with a wee airy creaminess seeping in once things warm up a stitch around here. It finishes off-dry, and generic as all get out - malty is the better word, I suppose.

Yeah - like in the Nelson session IPA shortly before it, somehow Mikkeller (and De Proef, let's not forget to mention them) fucked up this otherwise engaging antipodean varietal. This just comes off reeking of malt liquor and bad decisions, which of course, typically go hand in hand.

 

 

L: It pours a dense yellow with a spitting white head. Lots of bubbles.
S: I had expected considerably more fruit and pine notes. So we have some lemon, mango, grapefruit, grassy hop. Not impressive.
T: A balanced flavor that's not too hoppy or too sweet. Very fruity and it has hint of sourness.
OF: A well carbonated, smooth.
O: It's quite well made beer.

L:
-pours an opaque orange with a bif,frothy,white head
S:
-grassy,nettle,spicy,lemon,white grapes,white pepper,honey,bready,slight resin,green apples
T:
-pepper,grassy,lemon zest,nettle,honey,white grapes,peach
-low to medium bitterniss
F:
-low to medium carbonation
-medium,creamy body
-slight alcohol noticeable
O:
Fantastic SH DIPA,just a notch below Mikkeller's Citra version

More floral in its hop emphasis than would be ideal, and heavy on the crystal malts which gives it a thinner body than most IPAs. But the pale malt sweetness tames all hop bitterness, making it a balanced beer, and the smooth, wet mouthfeel and medium body support the simple flavours effectively.

Well put together with a satisfying albeit shallow hop profile. Not gestalt, but pleasant enough and highly drinkable for its fairly high ABV. I wouldn't buy it again, but I'll enjoy finishing the bottle.

High C+