Kill Your Idles: Tiki
Idle Hands Craft Ales

 

Pretty excited to have the newest Kill Your Idles beer in my glass right now... I've been an avid follower of this series since the release of the Blood Orange version, and they've really dialed it in over time. I think I've had all but one or two of these KYIs, and they each provide distinct and sometimes unusual blends of fruits, spices, and other ingredients into a base sour beer.

The pour here is an odd pink-orange color with a lot of body haze to it. Almost looks like an odd wine cooler to me, but without the clarity that usually entails. The head here both forms and dissipates quickly, leaving only the thinnest ring around the surface of the liquid in my glass as it bubbles up and subsequently fades into near-nonexistence. A tiny bit of sudsy lace appears, but nothing of note. The color is probably the most interesting part of this brew. Looks pretty nice, all things considered (i.e. it's a kettle sour so not much head presence is pretty par-for-the-course).

First few sniffs remind me of a slightly-lactic take on a decent Zombie cocktail. This beer features a mélange of fruit purées (pineapple, tangerine, peach, blackberry, cherry, and key lime) along with almonds to provide the "Tiki"-like elements of various tropical fruit/rum cocktails. Though I think this would be even better with some rum barrel aging, beggars can't be choosers, and I do pick up scents of blackberry, lime, and grapefruit, with some light tangerine as well. Maybe passion fruit-like aspects, too? Kind of has a "raspberry-lime rickey" element going on. I can tell this will, at the very least, be pretty damn fun.

Flavor profile is essentially what I expected but with some slight twists; this leads off with a big blackberry/tangerine hit before kind of losing focus and going into a generic "sour" territory, muddling it a bit before the interesting and unique amandine/almond note brings it into view once more. The mid-palate into the finish has strong key lime, grapefruit, and more tangerine with a slight hit of berry and more citrus. Perhaps this is a bit less tropical than expected (not enough pineapple, and seems like it's missing papaya or juicy mango or something), but it's also very different from the similarly-themed Kill Your Idles: Tropical. I dunno. Probably not worth getting four of it, but it's worth grabbing one to see if you enjoy it.