Double Double Double Double - Simcoe, Mosaic, Satus
New Image Brewing Company

Very cloudy straw appearance with nice white head that dissipates slowly. Aroma is a slightly sweet bitter citrus. Taste is a slightly bitter sweet citrus\ grapefruit with a nice feel.

 

Pours gold with dark tan, creamy head and lacing. Smells dank, hoppy, and slightly funky. Taste is dank, hoppy, slightly bitter, slightly tangy citrusy. Medium to big bodied, boozy as hell, mouth watering. I’ve had a couple quadruple IPAs recently, but this one is more hoppy than malty. I enjoyed this more than the other raters.

A: The beer is very hazy and a bit pale and dark yellow in color. It poured with a quarter finger high white head that left a short head covering the surface and lots of lacing down the sides of the glass.
S: Moderate aromas of grapefruit, pine and herbal hops are present in the nose.
T: The taste follows the smell and has additional notes of mango, orange and stone fruit. There is a light to moderate amount of bitterness.
M: It feels medium-bodied, smooth and a bit juicy on the palate with a moderate amount of carbonation.
O: I really liked the combination of aromas and flavors from the hops in this IPA.

Serving type: can

 

4-pack of 16 fl oz cans ran $22.99 USD plus tax (ouch!) at a beer store in Colorado.

"Quadruple dry hopped double IPA." Packaged 2021/04/26. 9.5% ABV.

BODY: Turbid yellow.

HEAD: ~7cm in height. White in colour. ~8 minute head retention. It holds up impressively well relative to its high ABV.

Appears well carbonated. Wouldn't catch my eye across a bar, but it's not a bad looking imperial IPA. I do think its appearance suffers from its seeming lack of filtration...

AROMA: Lemon, allicin, citrus, muted tropical fruit (melon mainly), grass.

Malt bill seems to be 2-row and wheat.

Aromatic intensity is average at best for the style, but in the context of their loud marketing (it's QUADRUPLE dry hopped! It's a DOUBLE IPA! It's an AVALANCHE of hops!) it seems quite weak and restrained aromatically. If this beer is meant to scream Mosaic, it doesn't (the hop varietal's signature subtle blueberry is absent at least aromatically). And if it's meant to showcase its hop varietals to their utmost potential, it doesn't seem to be judging by its lack of basic aromatic pungency and oomph.

TASTE & TEXTURE: Powdery and soft on the palate. Smooth, wet, medium-bodied. Not unrefreshing, actually, despite its high ABV. A bit chewy, I guess?

Hop flavour is pleasant but not over-the-top...it's certainly not as pungent hopwise as I'd expect a top tier imperial IPA to be. Vague citrus, vague tropical fruit (melon is all I can single out), pale malt/2-row barley, probably wheat. I don't taste any blueberry or obvious uniquely Mosaic derived hop flavour. It's somewhat fruity but I wouldn't call it juicy per se despite some citrus pulp flavour.

Frankly, it's surprisingly shallow for all of its quadruple dry hopping gimmickry and loud marketing jargon. I wouldn't say this showcases any of its hop varietals particularly well, and I think it fair to say even Lagunitas Sucks has more depth of hop flavour and commitment to its hop varietals.

OVERALL: It's a big letdown particularly given its wallet-raping pricetag. Another beer in the marketing-over-quality trend, favoring dubious claims about the extremity of its hop regimen as expressed on the label over actual commitment to the hop varietals the brewers selected as expressed via the beer's taste. The best thing I can say about it is it does a dangerously good job at disguising its 9.5% ABV, but that's not enough to get me to buy it a second time. Indeed, I'll be giving New Image's beers a more skeptical look on future beer runs...lads, the quality just isn't there, and New Image is in a state where it has to compete with Weldwerks, Odd13, Odell, and myriad other breweries that are doing this exact kind of IIPA better and cheaper. Hell, even Cerebral just across town is executing this kind of premise for a beer better...who is this for?

C+ / ABOVE AVERAGE