Double IPA
Glutenberg Craft Brewery

 

 

DATE: June 10, 2021... OCCASION: celebrating Michael's return to the diamond, a seven K playoff save... GLASSWARE: nondescript snifter... pours a clear golden body with sparse bubbles... its head foams for about ten seconds before deflating to an uneven ring, clumping in smears... tangerine, mango and pineapple create a tropical aroma, while cracker, millet, and buckwheat build a graininess to the smell that is a bit uneven... lilac and some boozy sweetness too... this sits on the tongue well, if not a bit oily... the body approximates the ABV, leaving a lasting sting... the buzz around the teeth denotes a hoppy presence, a wakeup call that enhances the experience... bite into a pineapple? this approximates that taste... secondary flavors include orange, lemon, and grapefruit... this is easy to et behind, a gluten-free beer that more than approximates the hop-heavy profile of the style.... a strong, weighty offering that satisfies an IPA expectation... the GF designation makes this all the more enjoyable... a triumph all around, and a beer up there with Stone's Delicious...

 

 

473ml can (@7% ABV) - likely the first gluten-free version of this style that I've encountered. Aaaaah, the trifecta of millet, corn, and buckwheat.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium copper amber colour, with four fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and mildly bubbly off-white head, which leaves a few instances of remote islet lace around the glass as it quickly sinks away.

It smells of bready and buttery caramel malt, muddled domestic citrus rind, some otherly mustiness, and fairly peppy leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, buttery hippie crackers, some orange, red grapefruit, and lemon citrus peel, a somewhat spicy alterna-grain funkiness, some mildly estery yeast, a hint of boozy-booze, and more earthy, musty, and resinous piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its palate-coating frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and sort of smooth, as the hops and hard to ignore weird graininess making it a chore to attain any sort of ideal here. It finishes off-dry, the mixed malt and zingy hops in a lingering tête-à-tête.

Overall - yeah, as usual, I'm of two minds about offerings such as this. On one hand, it's good and hoppy, but with a bit too many astringent grainy essences that drop it to below the norm for the style. On the other, for a G-F brew, this is among the best that I've ever had, essentially for the exact opposite reasoning.

 

 

Can: Poured a murky amber color ale with a medium size foamy head with OK retention and minimal lacing. Aroma of fruity hops with light bitter hops notes with some light grainy notes. Taste is mostly dominated by fruity hops with light bitterness notes detectable and some grainy notes and light residual sugar notes also perceptible. Body is full with OK carbonation and no apparent alcohol. This one did not have the hops presence I was hoping for but still very pleasant and hides well some of the speciality grain used in this beer.

 

Perhaps the best beer I have had from them, but the taste (especially) is still makes by odd grain miss that are slightly off-putting.

A - Deep copper pour with some haze and a finger of beige head. Good carbonation coming up. Spotty lace and a film of retention.

S - Mild. Grain, honey, earthy.

T - Sweet, some fruitiness, earthy. Syrupy?

M - Rough bitterness isn't really intense but unpleasant. Strong carbonation, medium to full body.

O/D - Pretty uninteresting and borderline undrinkable. Not a fan of the syrupy flavour and the sweetness in the flavour.