Stone/Water Collab DIPA
Swiftwater Brewing Company

 

This brew was served on draught at Tap and Mallet in Rochester, New York, as part of the South Wedge beer Olympics event. It arrived in house snifters, showing a dulled bronze coloring. A quarter finger’s worth of a whitish head was noted, but this faded quickly. In its stead were left pronounced mountains of lacing around our glasses. Faint haze reduced clarity, but no sediment was noted. Carbonation appeared to be light. The most prominent component of the aroma was, appropriately, the beer’s hoppiness. This came in the form of massive melon and citric oily varietals. Supporting this was a blend of wet seaweed, clean and pale American malted barley, hot glue-gun glue, a 7th grader’s perfumed hair gel, sappy cactus meat, Styrofoam plastics, cool tin, cloying peeled peaches in syrup, burnt coconut macaroons, clean vanilla bean, candied walnuts, plastic sandwich bags, and celery. With warmth came notes of a more powdery floral hoppiness, thin paper napkins, and hints of fusel booziness. The taste showed off grisly and gritty pale and amber grain, golden oats, light malt extract syrupiness, mild ricey adjuncts, soggy paper towels, bitter lemon skin and synthetic lemon wipe chemical bite, rusted pipe cleaners, dusty rope, piney and citric hoppiness, cloying fruity sugariness of a kiwi and watermelon Slushy, cherry lip gloss, honeydew melon, salty and bready yeastiness, and Special-K cereal graininess. The aftertaste held most of the flavoring’s hop strength, giving a final push of heavily bittering citric and grapefruity skin hoppiness down the throat. The body sat towards the full side of medium, while carbonation remained moderate. Slurp and smack were light, given the beer’s general “bigness”, but we suppose this left room for a creeping, chalky dryness to take over the remainder of the palate. The abv was stylistically appropriate, and this one was certainly an easy sipper.

Overall, there were plenty of things about this beer to make it pretty top-quality, however, the finished product, when examined through a magnifying glass, seemed to be a little cheap around the edges. The backbone is great. Starting with the aroma, for instance, you get all of the juiciness and dripping-wet hoppy squeeze that you could hope for from any DIPA. It certainly passes that test. The citrics are there in full force, but you also get a uniqueness of this melon fruitiness blending in there, functioning to add a touch of sweetness, but also to solidify the final complexity of the thing. Doing just fine so far. Then you get to the taste. It isn’t like hitting a wall or something equally as shocking, but you begin to see the layers peel away. Booze, hearty yeast, and cheapish grain begin to get under the drink’s skin, exposing an underlying, seemingly adjuncty filler material. Either way, the taste discrepancies aside, we both enjoyed the beer thoroughly, and are glad to have gotten to try this unique collaboration between two up and coming local teams.