GrowHop Series - Nelson Sauvin IPA
Phillips Brewing & Malting Co.

 

 

 

Bottle from a mixed pack poured into a shaker pint glass from a local brewery. Looks light, a sunny gold color just tinted with orange, with frothy off-white peaks of foam leaving some lacing on the glass. Aroma is resinous, vinous, and rather catty (yes, like urine), what others might call tomato leaf but I'll deem to be more like marigold. Interesting hop, this. Rankly floral and fruity with loads of gooseberry and kiwi. Dry, sharp, and almost woody on the palate but again redolent with white grape, gooseberry, and strawberry-kiwi notes. I wouldn't say pine but there's certainly a herbal astringency. As is often the case with these Phillips single hop numbers, the malts are in the background, a subtle caramel sweetness and a wisp of brown bread. Medium bodied, maybe a hair on the thick side, with some lively carbonation to compound the vinous fruit impact this hop is supposed to deliver. Dry herbal finish. Great job capturing the idiosyncrasies of this particular "flower" strain, although I find this one to be a little overbearing in its naked form.

341ml bottle, a single from the current Phillips Hop Box, procured at my favourite off the grid likka sto' for such things on the YEG south side.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow hue, with three fingers of puffy, foamy, and rocky ecru head, which leaves some sparsely strewn blobs of sudsy lace around the glass as it duly recedes.

It smells of that particular uric acid component of Sauvignon Blanc, in spades - yeah, cat piss - mixed with equally sharp leafy, herbal, grassy, and muddled citrus rind hop notes, crackery and chalky pale malt, a ghost of caramel sweetness, and further weedy, piney hop astringencies. The taste is still quite big on the duality of the acrid and the fruity from this particular terroir-specific hop - fresh cat pee (in a good way, it's quite hard to explain), gooseberry, kiwi, and green strawberry, saltine crackers, dry caramel pudding, tart generic citrus pith, and a mild earthy, weedy, and pinecone-friendly bitterness.

The bubbles are as fair and balanced (the cheque is not in the mail, Fox News) as they can be, the body an equitable medium weight, and not really all that smooth, the hops a sort of 800 pound gorilla in the mist. It finishes generally dry, the nature of the hops, and the acquiescence of the malt sealing the deal!

Well, this is certainly a showcase for all that the Nelson Sauvin hop can offer, that much is clear. As a long-time fan of its sister wine grape from the same region, it hits all the right notes, even if the overall beer suffers somewhat from this one-sidedness. Tasty stuff, especially from (one of) the experimental chemistry labs that Phillips keeps running.