Tropical Kind Double India Pale Ale
Three Heads Brewing

 

 

 

Three Heads Brewing "Tropical Kind Double India Pale Ale"
12 fl. oz. brown glass bottle without freshness dating
$2 @ Giant, Havertown, PA

Notes via stream of consciousness: A very hazy deep amber body reveals few bubbles rising, in fact I haven't seen any, but if I swirl the glass a bit fine bubbles appear beneath the creamy off-white head. There's some spotty and streaky lacing left behind but unfortunately the head drops quite quickly to a very thin surface covering and wide collar after each swirl. The aroma is floral and fruity but not necessarily tropical-fruity, a bit piney, and the lightly sweetish biscuity malt comes through clearly as well. The flavor, however, offers much more tropical flavor. Let me check the label... it's "...brewed with mango and passion fruit" and it shows. The fruit is forward with the malt taking a back seat, not by much, but some, and then it's bitter towards the swallow and into the finish, but not nearly as much so as the listed 87 IBUs would give you. It's medium bodied with a dextrinous side. I though maybe it's medium leaning medium-full but I've backed away from that, and it's just gently crisp. Nicely done. Sometimes double IPAs can have a little too much body but that's not the case here. Overall I have to call this one a winner. It could be more complex, I'll not argue that, but whatereve it gives up in that vein is just a trade-off for that juicy mango note. Well worth trying.

Poured from 16oz tall can into a dimpled mug. Canned 1/9/18.

Appearance: medium orange hue with a little bit of haze and a thick finger of frothy ivory foam. Not bad!

Smell: a little bit sweet with a light fruitiness; the fruit is orchardy in character with just a little bit of citrus. Not overly complex, but nice enough.

Taste: a bit sweet with a kind of muddled hop flavor and a pretty forward alcohol character. I like the fruitiness, but overall it's kind of messy.

Mouthfeel: medium body with a decent carbonation and creaminess.

Overall: there's just not much direction here. The fruitiness is OK, and there is a decent enough amount of bitterness, but it comes off as kind of bland and sweet.

Revisit 02/25/2018

Original ratings: 3.75 3.25 3.25 3.75 3.25

Appearance and aroma remain about the same, the taste is more pronounced; a bit more crystal malt sweetness and fruity esters.

The first can also had some strange brownish particles, elongated, that seemed to have formed around the ring of the bottom seal of the can. They weren't tough or anything, fell apart easily when touched. I didn't see any in this can (same canning date). Anyway, a bit more flavor overall yet still sees pretty subdued for a recently canned DIPA.

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Info on bottom of the can: #Summer Is Coming 01.09.18

Brilliant orange body; respectable head, somewhat creamy and sticky. Very faint smell of sweetness; some citrus suggestions. Low-key flavors; faint traces of citrus and tropical fruits; decent hop bitterness builds and lingers at the finish. Medium body; rough and coarse on the palate; very dry finish.

One would think being a DIPA that there would be more oomph and presence in the smell and taste categories. Well, the aroma is very hard to detect, but it is there. The taste is more pronounced yet lacks punch with the citrus and tropical fruit character one would expect based on the brewery's beer description. The hop bitterness is certainly there, but hardly makes for a balanced beer. Assuming the canning date is January 9th, 2018, this is far from being an old IPA yet it comes across as an old, faded beer. Drinkable yet forgettable.

 

 

2018-02-07
16oz can served in a pint glass. Given to me by @mr-jj. Date on the bottom is 01-09-18. I hope that's the canned on date. "Summer is coming."

Pours a clear nice amber with a medium to large head and a lot of carbonation. Smell is tropical juicy and a little floral.

Taste is bitter with a confusion of tropical juice flavors. Doesn't mesh well, isn't too bad. Doesn't clash -- just doesn't quite fit.

Mouthfeel is thick and soft. Overall, pretty decent beer.

I don't generally like weird crap in m beer if it's not Belgian. But I love mango, and the flavor works well with the hop profile. I was really disappointed with the smell. I expected a much fuller aroma. But that mango's presence is both tasty and tastefully done. Glad I have three more!

 

 

 

This will be my first entry for New Odds & Sods Sunday (Week 633), once the new overlords begin the thread. I recently completed a massive horizontal of New Belgium beers & now I am drinking & reviewing (mostly) single-o beers from The Bottle Backlog here at Chez Woody. My efforts are really beginning to pay off in that I am seeing movement & floor space + my guilt is beginning to abate.

From the bottle: "Ale brewed with Mango and Passion Fruit".

I Pop!ped the cap & began a gentle pour, in keeping with my New Year's Resolution and my Lenten denial. Aggro pours from bottles are now (mostly) a thing of the past. A vigorous in-glass swirl raised two fingers of dense, foam, bone-white head with decent retention that left good, sticky lacing behind when it fell. Color was Golden-Amber (SRM = > 5, < 7) with NE-quality clarity, but it was so close to, if not exactly 7, that The Gelt Gang declined a taste. Man, the nose smelled like the morning salad bar on the Mess Decks while in the tropics! Once we got stores of FFV (fresh fruit & vegetables) aboard, I would eat massive amounts of fruit every morning, eschewing my usual grits with either ham or sausage. I used to live for mango, guava, passion fruit and papaya. Plus, coffee, of course. Mouthfeel was medium, but a little thin for the style. The taste was slightly bitter, but very fruity, just the way I like my hoppy beers! There should always be an inherent bitterness in an AIPA and/or DIPA, but it should not be so sharpish as to overwhelm adjuncts and the flavors that the hops are imparting beyond their bitterness. Such is the impetus for recent blowback from brewers, chafing when customers are focusing on a beer's IBUs. They want us to realize that such is just one aspect of a hop-driven beer. Speaking of beers, back to this one. Mmmmmango! It was really prevalent here with the passion fruit imparting a light perfuminess. I was really digging this groove. Finish was dry, but I was tasting more of the passion fruit than I would have liked. They could cut back on it slightly & I would like this a lot more.

 

A - Slight haze with a nice copper color with creamy white lacing.

S - Some tart acidic tropical fruit aroma, light biscuity caramel malt. The fruit aroma is very light.

T - Malt forward all the way through until the very end with some sort of spicy rye/pepper underneath, and finishes with a very bitter, dry piney finish.

M - Nice medium body with gentle carbonation.

O - This has to be an old bottle because it's a malt bomb with no aroma. Three Heads - please start dating your bottles. I would give this another try but refuse to roll the dice again and get another old, outdated beer. Very disappointed but will definitely revisit and up the score if I ever find a fresh one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

22 oz bottle, no date, but bought from the store cooler. My bottle says 7.7% abv.

clear, golden copper color, thick white head. good head retention and lacing. as advertised, the aroma hops learn towards tropical fruit. but not as strong as expected. taste has a bit of malt flavor to balance the hops, but not much, I'd like more. medium bodied and average carbonation.

 

Love our local brewery and feel this is one of their best. Keep them coming and help support Rochester NY.

 

This is a really high quality beer

 

 

 

 

 

 

This brew was served from the tap at MacGregor’s Grill and Tap Room in Canandaigua, NY. It arrived in a dimpled house mug sporting a pale orange-goldenrod coloring, with a soft one finger head of the creamiest white bubbles. This exhibited excellent retention, leaving fine, crystalline lacing only after you sip the beer and the liquid level lowers. Clarity was crystal clean, with no sediment noted. Carbonation appeared to be light. The aroma gave light buttery diacetyls, dried floral and crispy citric hoppiness, hibiscus, white flour, toasty pale grain, flowing juiciness of canned peaches and pineapples, old fermented strawberries, lemon pound cake, buttercream icing, poppy seed, candy corn, sour boozy banana mash like “99 Bananas”, and echoes of hollow plastic phenols. Opening up through the taste came a blend of intensely, ruddy, muddy, and mineral-laden pale and somewhat amber malts, grapefruity hoppy oils and saps, floral and grassy wet hop flowers, moldy butters, toasty ale yeastiness, bittered varnish chemical bite, bile acidity, lemon zest, synthetic pine cleanser, vanilla bean slickness, roasted coconut slivers, and drying almond skin bitters. The body was medium, and carbonation was lighter. Nice cream and froth came high off the head, but otherwise slurp and smack were thinned and lacking. The mouth was otherwise left lightly coated, with a creeping chalky dryness up the back of the palate. The abv seemed appropriate, and the beer glugged back decently well.

Overall, we actually felt this to be more pale ale than IPA, let alone DIPA. This is due in part to the overly pale, somewhat wheaty malt base that thickly dilutes any hoppy overtones. We also felt that this particular offering doesn’t fit well into their “Kind” series, for essentially the same reason of lacing hops and over malting. Everything took second place here to whatever residual sugars and vague fruity inclusions were thrown into the mix to be able to slap it with a “tropical” label. This is not to say that we grossly despised the beer, but rather feel it didn’t meet the precedent set by their prior, hoppier beverages. It did pair well with our jalapeño-heavy bar nachos, and would likely compliment other jerk-spiced meals, but alone we felt it hollow, commercial, and gimmicky, and generally lacking in a certain quality that we’ve come to expect from Three Heads.