Spinning in Circles
Mast Landing Brewing Company

 

Another great beer from Mast Landing, these Folks make some really high quality beers

 

A- Pours with a less opaque body than most recent IPAs from the tallboy into a stange glass. The body is a golden orange hue and slightly hazy. The cap is thick and creamy and has great retention at about a cm high. Hard to see the glass behind the sprawling sheets of lacing.

S- Getting robust hop aromas upon pouring from a few feet away. The strong aroma is comprised of a few main things with stone and tropical fruits, softer citrus and some dank herbal notes as well. Tangerine, mango, slight melon/bubble gum, herbal, floral, spicy and slight berry notes.

T- Really opens up and rounds out quite nicely on the taste buds. A ripe, herbal dankness starts things off with ripe tangerine and mango with supporting notes of orange, grapefruit, melon, papaya, berries, lime and pineapple. Very much hop centric with light whole grain hints.

MF- Medium bodied overall with a crisp high end carbonation. The texture is fluffy and somewhat creamy and it finishes with a clean bitterness.

Really nice interplay between the bitter herbal and juicier hops giving you just enough in each sip. Bonus points for the awesome, minimal art on the can.

 

I'm always down to try a new Mast Landing IPA, especially if at least a couple of the following criteria are true: 1). It's over 8% ABV, 2). It's fresh enough to not have been added to BA prior to me sipping it, and 3). It's triple dry-hopped with really cool, interesting hops. This checks all three boxes, so I'm pumped to give it a shot. SiC is an 8.5% hazy DIPA that has been triple DH with Mosaic, Amarillo, and Strata hops. These guys generally kill the IPA game and have been responsible for some truly awesome bigger hoppy beers with unique hop combos before, so this should hopefully be no different!

The pour is a pretty good-looking moderately-cloudy orange color with nice depth to it and a fairly-sizable dollop of foam forming a retentive head on top. It's a lot less hazy than expected, honestly; when held up to light, I can see my fingers through the glass just fine, which is actually a little unusual for these guys. The head measures about a finger-and-a-half but retains well and leaves behind streaky, solid lace. Legs are nice and fine carbonation buoys the suds for at least five minutes after the initial pour, during which time the head slowly recedes to a half-finger.

The nose here is freaking crazy, I'll just get that out of the way immediately. It's bursting with incredibly ripe, juicy tangerine, intense passion fruit and mango, and a lot of big dank herbaceousness and unusual/intriguing esters that just jump right out of the glass. In the past, I've been a little undecided about Strata because I'm not always sure what it's doing in the recipes it's involved in, and maybe it's Mosaic giving it a little boost (can't discount the possibility, after all), but this must be the best-smelling IPA I've had with Strata involved in it yet. It's incredibly dank but also has a lot of complex citrus and oily elements that bolster its capabilities.

On the tongue, SiC is crisp and lean-tasting with a surprisingly light and peppy feel belying its high-ish ABV. It starts with layers of fruit gum, pineapple, tangerine/tangelo, and bitter grapefruit peel before a mid-palate highlighting dank/green notes, herbal elements, and slight pine/floral components takes hold. Not much malt here at all, but I guess there's a hint of biscuit-y toastiness as it warms... it's definitely not the focus, though, whatsoever. The finish is pretty "West Coast"-ish, actually. Bruisingly pine-y and bitter/floral/dank with a medium-lasting, resonating, firm bitterness. This beer is a little different from my expectation in terms of style, but I think the way they built it and pulled it off exceeded my expectations. Feels like Strata may be more at home in a more "old-school" style, bigger IPA, especially with help from some other great varietals.