Piña Coolada IPA
Gigantic Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

Poured from a 500ml bottle. A interesting collaboration with Gigantic and Superflux.
A pretty good Hazy Ipa overall the coconut is not overpowering at all.
A good one on a hot day. Stamped on the bottle Not as Awesome After 10/02/18

 

500ml bottle - strange packaging format for this bomber-forward brewery. Also, a collaboration with Vancouver's (the one in Canada) Superflux, which is cool, at least by Canadian beer geek standards.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium golden yellow colour, with three zaftig fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat creamy off-white head, which leaves a bit of awkward skewed and streaky lace around the glass as it lazily sinks into oblivion.

It smells of semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, watery scallions, muddled domestic citrus rind, a further indistinct tropical fruitiness, cold cream, and some tame leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and bready caramel malt, ethereal sweetened coconut meat, some weak pineapple, guava, and mango exotic fruity notes, faint orange and red grapefruit, a bit of wan milkiness, some mild damp minerality, and more understated herbal, grassy, and piney verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly restrained in its bored-seeming frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and more or less smooth, with a wee airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a tad out of the ol' basement fridge. It finishes off-dry, the malt and milky essences exhibiting some lingering moxie.

Overall - yeah, this isn't bad, but I'm not exactly getting the same experience that I did with Evil Twin's version that I had last week. The frooty pineapple character is too reserved here (being that it was supposed to be derived from hops), to really remind me of the titular mixed drink. And yes, colour me a hypocrite - hey, moods change, eh?

Poured into a Seattle Beer Week pint glass. Pours a very hazy golden amber with a one finger white head with good retention and lacing. Aroma of lightly caramel malt, citrus and tropical hops, orange and lemon citrus, guava, pineapple and passionfruit; a hint of green onion. Flavor is pale malt with slight caramel, tropical and citrus hops, lemon, grapefruit, mango, pineapple and coconut. Light lingering tropical fruit finish with a little burst of fresh coconut. Medium bodied with light creaminess. I see what they are trying for here with definite, but mellow pineapple and coconut flavors, but this tastes much more like a NE IPA than a Piña Colada (and for me that's a good thing). The coconut was a little disconcerting on the first taste, but fortunately there is a very nice, clear coconut flavor burst in the finish that actually seemed to put things together for subsequent sips. The dominant flavors are ultimately grapefruit, lemon, light tropical fruit and coconut. An interesting variation on the hazy, tropical IPA and refreshing. Maybe I'm getting tired of this style, but this was quite good, but did not get me excited.