6 Year Anniversary Oated DIPA
Orono Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

From a 16 oz can dated 12/20/20. Sampled Feb 5, 2021.

Cloudy golden pour under a foamy cream colored head.

Juicy, citrus, and pine aromas intermixed with the oatmeal malt vase.

Medium mouthfeel.

Juicy taste really. Sweet too. Tropical finish.

Poured into a 16 oz Nordic pint glass canned on 12/30/2029. Pours a cloudy dark orange with a 2 plus finger sticky white head that leaves big thick streaks of lace with excellent retention. 4.25

Aroma huge peach, mango, ripe melon, apricot, and pink grapefruit rind. 4

Taste follows peach, mango, honeydew, apricot, and a little hit of grapefruit in the bold finish. 4

Mouthfeel is big, fairly soft carbonation, a tad sticky not dry, and at 8.1% ABV it goes down fairly easy, but drinks bigger in flavor. 4

Overall this is a nice NEDIPA, slightly different, and really bold so it makes it memorable for me. I would recommend giving it a go. 4

I've enjoyed a few Orono IPAs in my time, so I figured it would make sense to grab a can of their sixth anniversary beer, an oated IPA brewed with "three different forms of oat malts" and hopped with Nelson, Zappa, and Zamba hops. Those last two are varietals I am very much unfamiliar with, so I'm hoping this beer helps me figure out what they do and if they're actually good.

The pour is pretty much opaque, though the liquid poured from the can seems a bit less-turbid than some other NEIPAs I've had. It's a decent looking beer, for sure, with an orange hue that has some light peachy undertones to the color, topped off with a a modest head of eggshell-white foam that builds up to about a finger and lingers consistently. Lacing is very solid and sheet-like. Not much in the way of legs or surface coverage, so it's not spectacular-looking, but it's alright for what it is.

The nose is kinda nondescript, honestly. I was expecting a little more intensity. I would expect something like this to be double dry-hopped, so maybe that just means I'm spoiled but... is it really that much to hope for at this juncture in NEIPA history? And maybe it was, indeed, DDH, but it really doesn't have a lot going on. I pick up some light lemon, tangelo, gooseberry, and hints of guava, but... not much else. Some slight research into these two new-to-me hops indicate that Zappa is a Neomexicanus varietal (cool!) with notes of spice, passion fruit, pine, mint, and... Fruity Pebbles? Sure, why not. Zamba claims elements of pineapple and mango with some stone fruit and basic citrus as well. That seems somewhat uninteresting, but perhaps those are just preliminary results.

The flavor here has me shrugging my shoulders as well, and I feel a bit unimpressed, in all honesty. This is your sixth anniversary beer? The brewery that made The Way Life Should Be, which is one of the best NEIPAs in the sub-6.5% ABV range that I've had in a while? Something like this feels like a weird step down from such an achievement, which is disheartening. I get some light tangelo, pineapple, and hints of mango flesh, but this is just so soft and ineffectual that it barely even hits my tongue before it all fades out in such a lame way. Something like this should really make an impression, and this feels super phoned-in.

I hate to be a jerk, but I can't just say this is a great entry to this brewery's repertoire. It's really kind of an uninteresting beer that feels like it's trying to coast on the use of some new hops without actually showing me why I should care about those varietals. Meh. I've actually had enough underwhelming hoppy beers from Orono at this point that I might put them in the "mostly avoid" category, which sucks (and this is in spite of their use of some excellent hop combos). I want to be a big fan of these guys, but something about what they're doing doesn't seem as high-quality as some other breweries in their general geographical/distribution area.

Brewed with zappa, zamba, and Nelson sauvin hops.
Lot of lingering bitterness but overall decent brew from OBC!