Voodoo Ranger Xperimental IPA #4
New Belgium Brewing Company

 

 

Poured from a can into a pint glass. Pours orange red with a fluffy white head. Smells of floral and citrus hops. Tastes of citrus hops with nice grain backbone. Beer is light bodied and easy drinking, good carbonation. Overall, a very good beer.

12oz from the variety pack - review from notes

Great look, an odd sour green-apple hop scent that is rounded out by rust and alcohol. The taste is unimpressive and also rounded out by an odd 'rust-water' flavor. Not much hop flavor here, just a weird rotten cheese dankness. As it warms, all you can taste is stale malt and ethanol.

The experiment went wrong

 

 

Pours a cloudy yellow with a lot of white debris, probably yeast, and a semi-thick white foam that dissolves unevenly.

Smells fairly mild, almost fruity, a bit sour, with no malt and barely any hop notes detectable.

Tastes weirdly blunt, somewhat bready and bland, followed by sourness. Some spiciness too. Bitterness after a few drinks. Leaves a kind of fruit rind aftertaste.

Relatively light, almost creamy though. Rough tannin mouthfeel after swallowing.

Too bland, yet also sour and weird; not very fun. Not sure I can finish the glass.

2021 Voodoo Ranger Hoppy Pack 04 - 12 pack
12 oz. can dated 210814 (08/14/21) - 6.6% ABV / 25 IBU
Brewed and canned in Fort Collins, CO or Asheville, NC
Poured into a Bell's branded pub pint glass

Look - Pours a thick, soapy white head that clings to the glass. Very pale yellow appearance that is very hazy with lots of floating chunks.
Smell - Picking up some citrus and vegetable scents from the hops.
Taste - Mostly has a citrus and stone fruit taste with virtually no bitterness. Also pick up some of the oat malt. The taste fades very quickly.
Feel - Pretty crisp and easy to drink. Medium bodied with a creamy mouthfeel.
Overall - Has a pleasant citrus and stone fruit taste and is easy to drink.

 

Part of a New Belgium hoppy variety pack.

Look - Medium golden with a two finger head. Good stick.

Smell - Peaches galore with touches of malt and a bit of spice of some sort it seems.

Taste - Going to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches for sure. Good malt balance. A touch bready. Super tasty.

Feel - Medium bodied, medium carbonation. Sweet. Peachy. Smooth. Inviting the next glug without problem.

Overall - Ratings for this beer so far don't match the finished product at all. I mean it isn't a super cool haze bruh bomb so I guess that would explain it but this is smooth as can be and very well balanced and tasty for a single hop ipa. ABV is right at 6.6%. Really like it for sure! Definitely try it.

EDIT already lol : Drank a second. Yeah this beer is downright exceptional. Will change scores to reflect.

New Belgium Brewing Co. "Voodoo Ranger Xperimental IPA #4"
12 fl. oz. can coded "31 OCT 2021 XIPA4 210528031V 81421". Sampled on 11 SEP 2021

Notes via stream of consciousness: So how do we know what the difference is between Xperiments? Or does it matter? I guess I've got to go to their website. So, OK, it's brewed with Nectaron hops which I haven't tried yet. They're supposedly peachy, and come from New Zealand. It's poured a cloudy golden body beneath a massive head of bright white foam. The aroma offers a little bit of peach and spiciness over sweetish and doughy malt but it's not nearly as peachy as I thought it might be. That's OK though, the label doesn't say anything about dry hopping and it's got enough aroma to it to pass; it's not great, but it's OK. On to the taste... well that's got more peach to it, and that spiciness remains which is a little weird but at the same time compelling. Once I get used to it I'll either like it or just not really be bothered by it - I definitely won't hate it. Right now it's just ho-hum, so we'll see. I was curious about these hops though, and so now I know what they'll give you. It's much easier to get an idea of what a certain hop tastes like in a beer that's been brewed with it 100% (I think so based on the New Belgium website) than it is to try to make a hop tea on your own. It's not as sweet as the aroma suggests it might be, but it's sweetish at the front, and there's a little bit of a honey note to it which is nice. That works well with the peachiness and spice of the hops. I'll say there's a little bit of a grapefruit note to it as well, but keep in mind, this is not an in-your-face hop, at least in this incarnation. It's got a median bitterness and finishes dry and spicy with just a flicker of pine lingering. In the mouth it's medium-light in body but the oats lend it some extra presence due to their retained proteins. It's smooth and creamy across the palate with a very fine bubbled, median carbonation. Looking back, the head retention was excellent and it's left some incredible threads and fuller splashes of laces throughout the entire glass. In the end I find this beer to be unique but otherwise unremarkable, and to be honest the only thing that makes it unique is the hop choice. In that, simply using a unique ingredient doesn't really make a unique beer; pretty soon other breweries will be putting out beers with this same hop and they'll be commonplace. I'm not finished with it yet, I still have about 4 ounces to go, but I've enjoyed it and I'd consider having it again. It's well made and I'm going to suggest you try it just to see if the Nectaron hops are something you enjoy.
Review #7,366

 

 

This is brewed with nectaron hops. Pours extremely pale and hazy- like a witbeer. Nice very persistent head and lacing. Tropical fruit aroma that was a little hard to compare to anything at first but I think passionfruit is the closest to the rather different smell. Maybe a little sourness in the nose? Taste is a one-dimensional bitterness with some vague tropical fruit flavor. I think again passionfruit and pineapple might be the closest. Malt needs a little more of a profile or backbone to balance this out. This tastes like a single hop beer and I assume that it is.
I've had some other stuff like this and it's always a bit disappointing, in this case especially so because regular Voodoo Ranger is a great IPA in my opinion. Very one note, although if you're a home brewer it give you an idea of what you're getting from this particular hop- and that's kind of neat. Strangely watery and light bodied. If you just knock it back it's pretty drinkable- this is worse the more you scrutinize it. Passable as an single hop experiment but pretty bad overall, especially in comparison to the other Voodoo Ranger beers.

A: pours a amber body with an off-white head with good retention and lacing.
S: juicy, citrus rind smell with hints of earthiness.
T: sweet, citrus rind taste with a dry, slight toffee finish.
M: full bodied and smooth
I: nice feel and taste combo; pretty good IPA overall.

 

 

 

 

Made an account to rate this beer. I am not an expert, nor really an accredited amateur, but I don’t think I’ve ever tasted something so foul and unremarkable at the same time. My first thought upon pouring into a tulip glass was that it looked pretty darn similar to any other Voodoo Ranger (not unexpected, they’re all pretty much riffs on the same theme). My allergies are cranked up right now so I thought I was imagining something when I caught a whiff of sulfur, but upon tasting it, I was shocked. Hop-fruit forward at first blush, but the combination of lasting bitterness with what must be an overexposed malt became what I can only describe as a “Gorgonzola IPA”. I would never buy this again, even if I somehow were victim of a bad batch or something. I don’t know enough about the brewing process to say exactly what went wrong, but this somehow combined both the boring NEIPA profile that Voodoo Ranger can sometimes fall into with a rancid aftertaste. I really hope the rest of you have a better experience, and that mine was a one-off.