Single Hop Single Farm Mosaic IPA
Two Beers Brewing Co.

 

 

 

22oz bottle. Nice to see another heretofore unknown to me PAC-NW brewery become available on Alberta beer store shelves.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale apricot amber hue, with three pudgy fingers of puffy, frothy, and sudsy ecru head, which leaves some thickly webbed and chainlinked lace around the glass as it slowly ebbs away.

It smells of thankfully un-dank pine resin, an herbal leafiness, overripe orange peel, hints of sugary field berries, grainy pale and caramel malts, a touch of wintermint, and a subtly metallic alcohol twinge. The taste is bready pale malt, wet white toast, an understated caramel sweetness, mixed forest floor detritus - pine needles and musty leaves, sure, but also herbal algae and cold-weather florals - a bit of stony minerality, and a now well sublimated mixed berry fruitiness.

The carbonation is duly present, in its Dude-friendly frothiness, the body a sturdy medium weight, and mostly smooth, this particular guest hop knowing just how to keep its hands to itself. It finishes off-dry, the well-blended malt backbone, well, showing it, amongst the flotsam and jetsam of pine, citrus, and berry single hop goodness.

Being that Mosaic seems to enjoy basking in its status as the hop flavour du jour (or 'semaine', or 'mois', or 'saison' - you get the idea), this particular example falls quite squarely in the 'yes, more please' realm that more than a few recent iterations did not. Yeah, I'm talkin' 'bout the dank - and I'm simply glad that this one plays it down, if not entirely in its rendering. Good stuff.

 

Going from the bottle into a... let's call it a close-enough-to-a-tulip I am excited as this is only my second encounter with single hop IPAs, and it seems like every time I hear Mosaic mentioned it is in a positive connotation.
The pour comes out frothy and pale with a gigantic foamy white head glistening with an almost pearl like opalescence. The beer itself is pale... like a colour template with a touch of muddy/grey added to the hue. A pale yellow somewhere between straw and the colour of half concentrated urine. But don't think about pee, because that's gross. It's just the colour.

Nose is generally fairly muted to begin with. There's a layer of almost berry sweet (though maybe that's the gummi bears taunting me from across the table? No... gummi bears can't talk. Probably not real. Probably. [And no, I'm not 'on anything' right now. So I guess I don't really have an excuse. hmmm....]). The two terms to describe the character if not the component of the aroma are blurry and blunt. They seem contradictory at first, but bear with me: the blurry is just that it's not an easily identifiable sharp flavour profile anywhere, and the blunt is that there's no sharp edges or hand holds to get a grip on, it's just kind of there without the nuance. Like a wall of noise compared to finely balanced songs. Again. Apologies for the rambling incoherence. So something like trying to make out precise figures through a foggy window? That's the blend of blurry and blunt I'm looking for!!

If this beer is a good representation, Mosaic seems to be a great complimentary hop. Like a good middle film in a trilogy, this seems to be lacking an onset, but if there was a bridge from the nothing-ness of pre-sip to the firm yet gentle second act that is sweet fruity hops backed by an acerbic finish that's not quite soapy (but not entirely lacking of the cleanifier), not particularly piney (but there's an element of pine SAP), not really particularly citric (but almost with a nod towards that pith we all love)...

Good medium body, and a decent malt body to give it structure without distracting from the real star of the show. Finish is that pleasant blend of honey/fruit sweet and punishingly enjoyable bitter that I'm imagining earns the varietal its praise (this is where I either sound either like a genius or a complete and total idiot... hey I just calls 'em as I sees 'em). A good highlight of a well respected hop, with the usual shortcomings of single hop beers. Comes across as a well crafted showstand of the Mosaics, and one I'd gladly drink again (which is not always the case with single-hop brews!).