Angry Reg Double IPA
Blackman's Brewery

This was bought fresh at the source, less than a month after canning, and drunk three weeks after that.

L: Crystal clear, amber-yellow with a big, fluffy white head and a huge amount of carbonation.

S: Spicey orange peel, mandarin, grapefruit and citrus.

T: A big caramel backbone and a massive kick of spicey, resinous, citric goodness. Everything is dialled up to eleven. The finish, however, is quite sweet, likely to fight the bitterness and alcohol, but as a result, the beer becomes cloying. As a result, I need to pause between mouthfuls, but that's probably not a bad thing. There's warmth and constriction in the gullet after swallowing.

M: The mouthfeel is relatively smooth, but the finish, while sweet, is also a little chalky, which adds to that cloying sensation noted earlier. The alcoholic warmth and hop load leave you no doubt you've just swallowed a double IPA.

O: Standard Reg is an excellent beer and one of the best IPAs in Australia. Angry Reg dials everything up, which highlights the big citurs and resinous qualities of standard Reg, but also draws attention to a less-than-stellar end to each mouthful, and it's that last bit that misfires for me and leads to the beer scoring lower than I had expected when I first sat down with it.

Cheers!
#588

Thankfully there’s a Double IPA waiting to be reviewed in my fridge! Blackman’s Brewery is a new one for me from Torquay in Victoria (Australia). This Angry Reg is apparently based on their single IPA: Reginald. It’s going up against some stiff competition here in the ANZAC-o-sphere with Pirate Life’s Imperial IPA, Tuatara’s Double Trouble and 8 Wired’s Super Conductor, can it surely compete with beers of that calibre? Well there is only one way to find out and it happens to be my favourite way of finding out if a beer is good or not, and it involves my giant gob... that’s right - I’m going to crack open this bad boy and drink it.

Poured from a 330ml can into a Duvel tulip.

A: Cloudy orange/amber goodness in the body with a 1.5 centimetre beige cappuccino foam head on top. The head soon completely disintegrates leaving spider web lacing on the side of the glass... mmmm. FYI: ‘murky’ is an adjective I find sexy when I look at a nice Double IPA and this one is chock full of murk. 9/10.

S: Sweet Starburst orange candy with pine resin - about as West Coast as a DIPA from Torquay can get! Hint of canned pineapple chunks and grapefruit mill around in the background as well... this is Aussie DIPA is almost indistinguishable from a US West Coast one IMHO - absolutely cracking aroma here! 9/10.

T: Flavours of the above: Starburst orange candy, pine resin, canned pineapple chunks and grapefruit from the hops push the balance towards an upfront bitterness which slowly dials up towards the after taste - which is high but not extreme. There’s little to notice in the way of malt from this hop onslaught but I would place it on the ‘biscuit’ spectrum of malts. Finish has a noticeably “green” cut grass/herbal/cannabis slant as well. This is one hoppy monster of a brew. 9/10.

M: Mid to heavy bodied with some decent hop oils in there and a dense but slightly sharp carbonation. Great body, carbonation sharpness is the only thing that detracts though I suspect that has more to do with IBUs than anything else. 8/10.

D: Wow! After a lame duck of a brew in Moon Dog’s Mack Daddy to this titan of a DIPA, there is almost no greater contrast in flavour and quality than what I just experienced (at least from a beer reviewers view). It’s the equivalent of swimming in the Dead Sea only to be plucked out and dropped on top of Mount Everest for my taste buds, and frankly any beer that comes after this right now will probably taste a bit like it - i.e. palate fatigue is massive with this brew. Love it! 9/10.

Food match: You’re going to need something spicy to compete with these flavours.