Merge Like A Zip
8 Wired Brewing Co.

Pours a brown colour with slight red tinge. Beige foamy head. Sizeable bubbles but retains thick and chunky. Looks good.

Smells hoppy. Touch of chocolate malt but mostly NZ hop character, with some lemon dish detergent and passionfruit. Pleasant.

Taste is lacking in roast. Some caramel malt character with a touch of cinnamon on the front, but then mid-to-back is all hops. New Zealand mostly, with lots of pine, passionfruit and other fresh, tropical flavours. Nice hop character makes it a pleasant drop but would like more roast in my black IPA.

Touch of alcohol on there is inevitable, but body is pretty nice so it's all padded pretty well.

Bit of a booze note, and overall more IPA than black. I like it, though.

 

Tried on-tap at the GABS festival in Melbourne during Good Beer Week.

Pours a deep brown colour, slightly hazed with a decent heft to the body. Head is a creamy beige, forming a solid film across the top and ringing lacing down the glass. Looks good.

Clean and bright on the nose. Orange zest comes through and a little fresh melon aromas. There's not much roast, but that's fine for me in an IBA—the nose is meant to confound the eyes.

Light clean brown malt on the entry, providing a pleasant basis for what's coming. Orange ramps up a little before some brighter hop characters coming through mid-palate. Clean and crisp, they blend nicely with the malt character. The back is dryer, with a pronounced bitterness, but maintaining that crispness and smoothness in balance.

The feel is just a little bit light, especially for 9.5%, but that does help in some sense, and to be honest, it must be harder to get such a light body in such a big beer.

And that's somewhat of the overarching theme of this beer. It's really surprisingly light and drinkable given its stats. This is at least partially because the flavours are so well melded together, but it's also probably just testament to what a good brewer is at the helm.