Piggy Pop Orange Dreamsicle
Blind Pig Brewpub

This beer is surprisingly bad in almost every possible way. It's a bright dehydrated urine color. There is a stunning effect from the combination of the lactonic notes, bitter orange zest notes, vanilla notes, and painfully bitter hops that tastes uniquely like vomit. This somehow incorporates all the worst elements of the beer style. Hops can have a wonderful citric or pine flavor, so initially this sounded good. This beer does not highlight these flavors. This beer highlights the bitter, sharp, unpleasant elements of the hops flavor, as though the hops were added too early in the boil. The bitterness is grating on the back of the throat, like eating lemons. It may be the orange zest, the hops, or some combination. The thing is, I actually enjoy bitter IPAs if they have some nice aroma hops added towards the end, and some complexity; that's not this one, though. If you love IPAs, you might find the dreamsicle flavor distracting and unnecessary, like I do. If you like beer that tastes like dreamsicles, you might like that flavor with a hefeweizen, or something similarly less bitter, but this won't be sweet and creamy enough for you. Beer-haters would not like this. Personally, I appreciate that the orange and cream isn't totally overwhelming, and that you can taste the beer itself - but in my opinion, neither the beer itself nor that weird dreamsicle flavor hits the mark. I just feel these flavors *could* work together, but as done here, they do not work together. & I just cannot stop thinking that this tastes like vomit....

Their description is "We took a bright, already-juicy IPA base and added loads of orange puree and orange zest, some Madagascar vanilla, and a couple splashes of milk sugar to fluff up the body a bit. The result is just...*chef's kiss*... Soft, citrusy sweetness with just enough hop bite to assure you it's still an IPA at heart." (Gift from Angie.)

update: this has literally given me a sore throat from the overdose of orange zest. This is really awful.