Bangalore Torpedo IPA
Two Sergeants Brewing

 

 

Mine says 7.2%, half the bottle is filled with huge globs of yeast. Bottle conditioning is tough, I have no idea why young breweries attempt it.

The remaining beer has little hop aroma, smells sort of metallic & skunky, gigantic bitterness. An IPA from another time.

 

I finally got a chance to try this beer from Fort Saskatchewan, a place of mixed memory for me. As a young man, we would routinely get our asses handed to us by the local team that would have several high NHL draft picks. As an young man, I got my first temporary teaching gig in the Fort, which I enjoyed immensely. On to the beer...

This is an IPA that does not mess around. It is lovely, bready, and zesty on the nose. The light appearance belies an aggressive, resiny hop profile. On balance, this is a great beer to counter spicy food like the Indian feast I am preparing this evening. On balance, a unique IPA, but not for the faint of heart.

 

650ml bottle poured into Sam Adams pint glass. This is apparently a new version, with an elevated ABV of 7.2%.

Pours a gorgeous hazy honey yellow with one puffy finger of beige head that leaves Arabic graffiti lace as it slowly recedes.

Smells of sweet doughy caramel malt, mixed citrus zest and sticky pine resin.

Tastes of big citrus and pine hops and more breakfast biscuit malt. Blood orange, grapefruit, lemon peel and sappy pine.

Feels frothy and fluffy. A hefty middleweight with energetic carbonation. Finishes pretty dry.

Verdict: Highly recommended. An improvement over the original, which seemed a touch thin to me.

 

 

355ml can, the first offering from this brand new brewery from the NE suburbs of Edmonton, though it (whose name is a reference to an anti-mine device dating back to before WWI) is currently being brewed at Tool Shed down in Cowtown.

This beer pours a rather hazy, medium golden amber hue, with a tower of puffy, rocky, and silkily foamy ecru head, which leaves some random sticky and streaky cloudy lace around the glass as it slowly recedes.

It smells of fairly sweet caramel malt, further biscuity toffee notes, watery pine resin, sharp, yet muddled citrus rind, and more musty, earthy, and leafy hop bitters. The taste is a better balance of sweet and tangy - nougaty caramel malt, hard toffee, acrid pine needle, reduced orange and white grapefruit peel extract, and yet more leafy, herbal, and grassy hops.

The bubbles are quite active and supportive in their frothy meanderings, the body kind of on the lean side of middleweight, and mostly smooth, that big hop bitterness hard to keep at bay forever. It finishes off-dry, a tumultuous street battle of caramel malt and complex hoppiness raging on.

A pleasantly engaging and worthwhile first venture for Two Sergeants (it sure doesn't taste like Tool Shed's IPA, so, um, good!), the saucy IPA bitterness ramped right up, without forgoing the malt countermeasures. In fact, both, as mentioned, assault the palate with a war of attrition, one welcomed without a fight.