Space Invader
Great Notion Brewing

 

 

 

Little known fact: the Pacific Northwest has its own corollary of #TeamGreen v. #TeamJulius which wasn’t quite obvious before as it is now. Hidden behind the fame and star power of Juice Box/Jr., Ripe, and Double Stack, Space Invader was doomed to fall to the second team of Great Notion Brewing Northwest Conference All-Stars; that is, until its inaugural batch from the new brewery came out and totally blew Juice Box out of the water.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not succumbing to #TeamSpaceInvader just yet. For some reason, this past batch of Juice Box sacrificed a lot of its sharp hop-driven edge for the sake of… well, juice, while Space Invader was somehow endowed with this new dimension of sharp, explosive tropical hops flavor which seemingly lied dormant in previous batches I’ve had the opportunity to try. Or it could just be that I always got too excited whenever a Ripe/Juice Box variant came out and reached straight for those instead of giving Space Invader a well-deserved second try.

Gratuitous embellishment and personal anecdotes aside, I haven’t seen this kind of masterful and exuberant display of tropical, Southern hemisphere hops since Monkish Brewing’s Swinging Sword Lecture. Whereas the pineapple character in the Rockwilder-inspired SoCal Galaxy-Enigma bomb was more incisive and sharp, kind of like that slight metallic/acidic aroma mixed in with pineapple that you get the moment you open a can of Dole pineapples, the Galaxy-Enigma combo in the Galaga classic-inspired brew is more rounded and sweet, kind of like piña colada, but with maybe half the rum.

The pineapple is initially complemented by a grassy vegetal, borderline onion/garlic-like earthy constituent, but this seems to fade out of the picture pretty quickly, allowing for the pineapple to settle in for the long haul. If you’re wondering why I’m not writing separate sections for aroma/flavor like I usually do it’s because (1) they’re almost indistinguishable with this beer, and (2) everything is after a 9-hr workday on a Monday.

Medium-light body with a soft, fluffy, yet at the same time, sticky consistency. Initially creamy, but errs on the side of clean and juicy as it traverses further down the palate and into the esophagus. A gentle, yet not entirely negligible amount of carbonation accompanies this brew; for the sake of clarity we’ll say it’s somewhere between medium and low.
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#TeamSpaceInvader may have won this first round, but I’m about 98.3% sure #TeamJuiceBox isn’t relinquishing its true and righteous place at the top without a fight. If not, there’s always Ripe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can dated 11/13:
Perfectly uniformly cloudy with a fluffy cloud of eggshell head. Lacing is strands of cotton caught on unseen burrs in the glass.

Nose of an Oates malt and guava mainly, with some papaya as well. An accent exists, like some candied fruit, but I can’t tell if it’s more of a sweeter citrus note or pineapple.

The flavor, unfortunately, doesn’t deliver the notes from the nose too well. The guava comes through a thicket of oat/malt, but is drenched in the flavors of the barrier. A thicker than average feel is less creamy than it could be thanks to a bite from from the carbonation/yeast. There is a little dry wood pine that I get in a lot of the hazy IPAs that I often feel is a combo of hops and oat, and a little hint of grapefruit that sneaks in with warmth.

I am not certain there are oat flakes in this, but what I get is similar to what I get in beers that have that added. It seems to mute the hops here. Even though this has a light bitterness in the late taste, it’s more of a thick, drinkable balanced NE IPA.

Out of this world!