Pendulum
3 Sheeps Brewing

 

 

 

Some fridge temp and some room temp bottles on one hot, one warm and breezy, and one chilly and very windy day.

Look: Barely hazy honey syrup, a good tight hat of foam that settles into a thin, dense lace blanket, with more spots of lace that look almost like they're desperately clinging to the side of the glass trying to not get dragged back into the liquid by gravity, only small scattered pieces managing to get a solid foothold.
Aroma: Slightly fruity bread and yeast with agave syrup and classic hop pellet mix that's at the front of the stage but never bombastic. There's also a subtle thread of something like roasted zucchini (or some other slightly sweet, cucumber-adjacent vegetable or maybe squash), which I quite like mixed in with the rest of the typical smells.
Taste: Light barley crackers with threads of fruit and sweet and very slightly earthy vegetables with a light honey or agave syrup element throughout. Not quite peachy, not quite carrot-y nor squash-like. Not really out of the ordinary, but more complex than super crisp pale ale with pine needles. At room temperature, the aftertaste of the hops is grassy and just touches the edge of garlic, with a little pine and resin sticking at the roof of the mouth and back of the throat and wafting into the sinuses. This wouldn't bring the taste down if it didn't linger quite so much in quite the sticky, cloyingly bitter way that it does, just barely overwhelming the tongue and cheeks with evergreen clippings.
Mouthfeel: Good, fizzy enough and a little pillowy when drinking or swishing it to savor.

Overall, a nice IPA with some subtle twists that keep it interesting without preventing it from being refreshing. However, the bitter resin tackiness builds up quickly in my third bottle even when taking quick sips and not swishing/chewing, leaving me feeling like I just ate a mouthful of raw hops and dandelions after a few sips. The tackiness started to go away with more sips, but that might be the first shades of palate fatigue setting in, leaving my tongue unable to process much more than the sweeter side of the beer's spectrum of flavors. The other bottles didn't seem to have this issue, but I didn't sit down to write a review until I opened the bottle that did.
I never figured out what to call the just-barely-sweet-and-not-quite-peachy-zucchini quality in the few bottles I had over a couple of weeks, but I really enjoyed it as a thread braided into the usual cracker and fluffy biscuit elements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12oz can poured in to a nonic glass. Packaged on 03/31/20.

Look- Clear darker amber color. Solid off-white head that recedes slowly to a thin foam cap, nice lacing. Moderate carbonation streams visible.

Smell- Citrus (orange, grapefruit and lemon/lime), pineapple, peach/apricot and melon, light berry, caramel type malt, faint pine and other floral/grassy hop notes.

Taste- Similar to the aroma, citrus and pineapple, candied apricot, melon, sweet malts followed by light pine and floral/herbal hops, minimal bitterness. Well balanced.

Feel- Medium/light bodied, rather juicy and somewhat sticky. Moderate carbonation on the tongue.

O- A very nice IPA and pretty darn quaffable at 6.5%. Definitely worth trying

1” medium density head on pour. Medium gold color. Nose is understated compared to taste. Not as much fruit flavor as I expected based on the description but solid, easy drinker.

The only place this fell down at all was that I felt that the aroma was a bit less than it could be. Taste and mouthfeel were right where I would want them to be. Solid beer for sure