Area 52 Chimpanzebra IPA
Phillips Brewing & Malting Co.

 

 

Appearance - Pours a light copper with three fingers of foamy white head.

Smell - bready malts, earthy and leafy hops, grapefruit rind, citrus (orange).

Taste - Starts off with the bitter earthy and leafy hops then goes into the bready malts. The grapefruit rind and citrus (orange) round out the brew.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes with a lingering bitterness from the hops.

Overall - Another great IPA from Phillips. These experimental brews are always a stand out. This one sets itself apart from the crowd of the Area 52 series.

 

Bottle poured into a shaker pint glass from a local brewery. A dark bronze brew with a finger of creamy meringue-like beige head and a mild aroma ... A biscuit-like maltiness garnished with mellow grapefruit, berry jam, and lots of herbal green leaf notes ... Fresher than black tea but tartly tannic just the same. Consistent with the whole experimental top secret sales pitch (which I think is fun, don't get me wrong!), this is a divergent IPA. I'm getting lots of tea leaf, berry jam, and herbal tincture flavors with the citrus more in the background, although there is a pleasing lemon-lime-orange thing playing out in the shadows. Crisp, astringent but not caustic or otherwise unpleasant, like gummy candies soaked in earthy bitter Chinese herbs ... Fascinating really. Brisk carbonation and a moderately chewy body. Finishes dry, with citrus rind, medicinal herbs, and toasted biscuit all present and accounted for but nothing too overbearing. The pretzel-like malts and deep herbal earthiness are what stand out late. Phillips is indeed doing some different things here and the exploration is much appreciated.

 

341ml bottle, another emigre from the current Phillips Hop Box, one of the two guest experimental IPAs therein, and deemed (beyond the apparently unutterable code name), 'IPA #7737'.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium copper amber hue, with two fingers of puffy, bubbly, and sort of foamy tan head, which leaves some decent floating iceberg fortress lace around the glass as things slowly dissolve into the ether.

It smells of bready, biscuity caramel malt, a chalky stoniness, white grapefruit and underripe orange rind, and further weedy, herbal, and leafy bitters. The taste is grainy, crackery caramel malt, wet stone paths, mixed citrus pith astringencies, forest floor pine notes, and more of those outlying hop bittering agents - be they herbal, leafy, or yeah, weedy - broken record FTW!

The carbonation is fairly understated, just a meek burbling for the most part, the body an adequate middleweight, and plainly smooth, with a softly burgeoning airy creaminess. It finishes generally dry, the malt putting up the good fight thus far, but those unspecified hops just have too much edge, baby!

Whatever the experiment is that y'all are running with this one, Phillips, keep it going - it may not overly differ from your other Area 52 non-entities, but it's notable enough to engender further exploration, both on your and my part alike.