Double Dirty Hippie
Kern River Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Growler pour at the pre-FWIBF bottle share held at the Adelaide Inn in Paso Robles, CA.

Pours a hazy dark orange with a foamy beige head that settles to a partial film on top of the beer. Small dots of lace form around the glass on the drink down. Smell is of malt, citrus zest, and herbal and vegetal hop aromas. Taste is much the same with citrus zest and slight herbal hop flavors on the finish. There is a mild amount of hop bitterness on the palate with each sip. This beer has a lower level of carbonation with a slightly crisp mouthfeel. Overall, this is a very good beer with a nice mixture of different hop qualities all around.

 

 

 

 

 

From Kern River Brewery tap to tulip

This is the second or third 'Imperial Red Ale' I've had this year, and this is an Imperial, IMPERIAL Red, so I predict a new category soon. And the brew is as advertised; big, boozy, candied malt aspects. Hops are dank as hell...if you need a benchmark for what brewers describe as 'dank', stick your nose in a glass of this. Still, it's not as dialed in as a typical Kern concoction, nor the single version of this beer. This isn't much of complaint though, I'm throwing it back easy enough, but KRB's bar is set high. The specs:

A: The beer has a murky apricot-like color, medium froth with little islands of patchy lacing.

S: Pure dankness right upfront. Toffee and yeasty funk join the prominent bouquet. Notes of alcohol and grass linger.

M: Chewy, viscous, oily. Fortunately there's enough carbonation to wash scrub the sticky complexion.

T: Big resinous hops up front, dank and pithy. The malt-backbone is huge, yielding distinct notes of caramelized sugar and husky grain. It gets to be a little hot around the edges, and the hop and malt aspects are slightly disjointed, leading to a long and sticky finish.