Brut 300
Fulton Brewing Company

16oz can. Poured out a cloudy, golden color with a small, fluffy white head of foam. It smelled of orange, grapefruit and caramel. Sweet tropical taste with toasted caramel. Nice dry finish.

 

16 ounce can into tulip glass, canned on 11/28/2018. Pours lightly hazy/cloudy deep golden amber/light orange color with a 1-2 finger fairly dense and rocky off white head with great retention, that reduces to a nice cap that lingers. Nice dense soapy lacing clings on the glass, with a fair amount of streaming carbonation. Fantastic appearance. Aromas of big red grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, peach, pineapple, apricot, passion fruit, papaya, mango, honeydew melon, guava, blueberry, citrus peel/zest, light peppercorn/pine, cracker, toasted biscuit, light honey, and herbal/floral/grassy earthiness. Damn nice aromas with great balance and complexity of citrus/fruity/tropical hops and moderate bready malt notes; with great strength. Taste of huge red grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, peach, pineapple, apricot, passion fruit, papaya, mango, honeydew melon, guava, blueberry, citrus peel/zest, light peppercorn/pine, cracker, toasted biscuit, light honey, and herbal/floral/grassy earthiness. Light-moderate pine, citrus peel/rind, herbal, floral, grassy, peppery bitterness on the finish. Lingering notes of grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, peach, pineapple, apricot, passion fruit, papaya, mango, honeydew melon, guava, blueberry, citrus peel/zest, peppercorn, pine, cracker, toasted biscuit, light honey, and herbal/floral/grassy earthiness on the finish for a good bit. Incredible complexity, robustness, and balance of citrus/fruity/tropical hops and moderate bready malt flavors; with an awesome malt/bitterness balance, and no lingering hop astringency after the finish. Light-moderate increasing dryness from lingering bitterness. Medium carbonation and body; with a very smooth, moderately creamy/bready/grainy/sticky, fairly crisp, and lightly resinous/rindy balanced mouthfeel that is fantastic. Minimal warming alcohol for 7%. Overall this is an incredible brut IPA! All around fantastic complexity, robustness, and balance of citrus/fruity/tropical hops and moderate bready malt flavors; very smooth and fairly crisp/refreshing to drink, with the mellowly bitter/drying finish, not aggressive. Amazing Mosaic profile! Extremely juicy, vibrant, and fairly dank/earthy hop complexity; with a great balancing bready pils malt backbone. Minimal residual sweetness from crisp dryness. A highly enjoyable offering, and outstanding style example. Tons of juicy hops, and not overly bitter. Loved the hop profile as expected.

This will only be my second brut ipa. Pouring from a 16 oz. can into a Willi Becher glass, this beer pours a honey color with small sediment floating throughout. It forms a rocky, but well held, two finger, white crown.

The smell brings a nice citrus, tropical, juicy presence mixing with some pine notes.

The taste comes in with some stonefruit and some green onion that I’m not really used to picking up. Some grassy character mixing with some white grape, berry notes.

Mouthfeel is dry, but not as dry as expected from the first Brut I had. Bitter.

Overall, I’m not really sure if this is a good representation of the style. It seems like a crossover of a Brut/west coast to me. But like I said, this is only my second of the style.

I have had approximately ten or so Brut IPAs so far and they have been so different from one another that I would barely call this denotation a proper "style," but that's going to have to be beside the point of this review. Fulton's Specter is a really solid IPA that I quite enjoyed the one time I had it, but let's see how they do with a low-IBU full-strength IPA. Will it have the proper aroma and mouthfeel to qualify as a player in this weird trend of IPAs?

Pours a deep golden color with pretty nice clarity to it. It's not fully transparent, but it's vibrant and mostly nice looking. The head is quite voluminous and spectacularly effervescent, with the liquid tumbling out building up a huge sheet of foam measuring about four fingers at its apex, and the lace is fairly decent as well. Same goes for the legs... I'm very much appreciating this just from an aesthetic point of view. Could really go either way, but this is a nice first impression.

I've generally found that the smell of the "typical" Brut IPA I've had (keeping in mind that there really hasn't been much commonality between the examples I've consumed) has been fairly muted, and this seems to fall in line with such an expectation. I get vague suggestions of stone fruit and light mango flesh. It just doesn't have much going for it, though. Slightly grassy, maybe? There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but it's just boring and doesn't inspire me to care much about it. I also pick up a note of lactose for some reason... maybe something to do with whatever amylase enzyme typically works on the usually-unfermentable sugars stripped out of beers in this style? I want to say I have noticed this element in a couple other Brut IPAs, but I can't think about which ones specifically (mostly because the style itself has failed to leave any kind of actual impression on me thus far, but I digress).

This has next to no flavor, honestly. It's just ephemeral and watery with a slight flash of mango and grassy notes with a bit of pineapple and maybe even a blip of citrus peel... but, yeah. Nothing happens here, and the finish is so quick to come on that anything I notice gets washed away practically immediately. I don't understand why anyone would prefer this over a nice, full-bodied NEIPA other than maybe someone finding the turbidity associated with the New England style to be aesthetically unpleasant. It's not even dry enough, nor is there any bracing carbonation or anything to make it actually "Brut"-like... I just don't understand this style, I guess. Or, maybe brewers don't have a complete understanding of how to pull it off? Who knows. I think I'm already over it.