Sabotage
Trouble Brewing

RB transfer

 

 

500 ml bottle, clear golden brown frothy generous head. aroma is malty, earthy with a touch of pepper, flavour fairly bitter with a nice bite, pleasant sourness, not a lot of fruit, I think it's a good beer but not top-notch.

Drank from a 500 ml bottle poured into a glass. Not much aroma of hops. Dark Amber colour. Small head which dissipated quickly. Taste is slight hop slight citrus and burnt caramel slightly toffee. This is not as hoppy as the American pale ales (which I prefer) but is not a bad Irish IPA with a slightly bitter after taste. Would I recommend trying this? Yes. Would I drink it again? Yes. Would like to try from cask. Could do with some refinements but all in all not a bad beer from a good Irish brewery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

500ml bottle from Blackrock cellar, poured into a Spiegelau IPA glass.

I'm a bit conflicted as to whether to write this review - had a bottle last week which was phenomenal, crisp, tasty, hoppy and interesting. This on the other hand....isn't. No evidence of freshness date on the bottle which should possibly have been a warning - I wouldn't buy coffee without a "roasted on" date so why buy a beer without a brewed on/freshness date?!?

A: Pours a clear, dark caramel color with a sizeable off white head - this disappeared pretty quickly though with average lacing remaining.
S: DISAPPOINTING. Smells too sweet, sickly, dank, unpleasant. Think dried berry fruit rather than bright, piney, citrus you'd like to expect from an IPA.
T: Again sweet, biscuity, bears very little resemblance to an IPA as I know them, and I dont just mean West Coast US hop bombs. This is just flat, uninspiring, disappointing and most definitely not the 'assertive hoppy bite, of both citrus and spice' claimed.
M: medium/low carbonation - not good.

O: really disappointing - last bottle was great. Consistency?!?

 

 

 

As I write this Ireland is currently experiencing a heatwave and on what turned out to be the hottest day of year so far I picked up a few bottles of Trouble Brewing's newest beer, the Sabotage India Pale Ale to try out.

First of all Sabotage is dark in colour for a Pale Ale, a woody, golden brown colour. I've had Pale Ales before that were a similar colour so I'm not bothered by it.

The aroma, in a word hops, rich roasted hops. I'd recommend taking a big old sniff of this beer just before you taste it, it's like the appetizer before the main course.

Flovourwise Sabotage has a lovely, well rounded hops taste to it, rich but still balanced. Trouble Brewing apparently brew Sabotage with five different varieties of hops. However, I found it lacking the bitterness often found in Indian Pale Ales but also lacking any discernible citrus notes. In fact, tastewise I was reminded more of hoppy English ales (such as those made by Shepard & Neame) than of a classic IPA. Personally I like English ales and IPAs both so thats not an issue with me.

Overall, Sabotage India Pale Ale is a great tasting, very drinkable beer. It goes down easily at 5.5% and I'll definitely be ordering it again.

 

This new addition to the Trouble Brewing range was released in February 2013. Five types of hops are used in the brewing of this beer, most particularly Galaxy (or so I was told). I was fortunate to be at the launch of the beer in Against The Grain pub, Dublin and was able to have a couple of pints of both the keg and the cask version.

Suffice to say, there is a marked difference between the two; the cask version having a wonderful mango/melon aroma and had a decent amount of bitterness to the taste. The keg version was more subdued with a cleaner crisper finish. Both were decent, but the cask was definitely superior so I mostly stuck with that. Both had an amber appearence with the cask having a fair amount of haze to it.

They plan to release the bottled version later in 2013.