Bass In Your Face
Interboro Spirits and Ales

 

 

2019-05-06
16oz can served in a pint glass. Not sure, but I think the date on the bottom is 3/14/19. It also seems to say "Fish in your face".

Pours a hazy amber color with a smallish head and medium to light carbonation. Smell is boozy, lemon-citrus.

Taste is boozy, moderate flash of tropical fruit, then bitter followed by a grapefruit and lemon flavor.

Mouthfeel is medium bodied. Overall, it's not bad.

 

 

 

Canned on 3/14/2019. Poured into an Interboro pint glass. It pours a turbid, dirty gold color with a creamy, bright white cap and thin sheen of creamy, spotty lacing. On the nose there is lemon peel, tangerine, and lite melon, pine, and floral hops. It opens with a English malt, oats, and wheat cracker, along with lemon, and grapefruit rind. It's very dry and decidedly bitter with a flavorful bill of Centennial, Mosaic and Simcoe hops. The overall taste is tangy with a good balance between semi-sweet grains and bitter hops. Maybe its best attribute is its mouthfeel: full and creamy with moderate carbonation. At 7% ABV it is very easy to drink. I was a little surprised by some of the low reviews but they are from 2016. Interboro may have tinkered with the recipe since then. I enjoyed Bass in Your Face; in fact, it grew on me as I drank it. Lately I've enjoyed all of the Interboro offerings I've had.

 

 

64 fl oz growler fill purchased at Interboro an hour ago for $16.00 USD. Counterflow fill.

7.90% ABV.

Served cold into stemware and allowed to warm a bit over the course of consumption.

HEAD: ~5-6cm in height. Off-white colour. Nice frothy even consistency. Good complexion. Invitingly soft in appearance. Retention is superb - ~10 minutes. Leaves a light layer of lacing as it recedes.

BODY: Murky dull copper colour. Obviously unfiltered; nontransparent and hazy. Minor translucence. No yeast particles are visible within - at least in the first pour from the growler.

Appears well-carbonated. It's not the best appearance for an imperial IPA, but the head is nice.

AROMA: Tropical fruit, melon rind, mango, pineapple, guava, floral character. Not citrusy, juicy, grapefruity, resinous, or oily. Has a blip of yogurty tang. Pale malts keep any hop bitterness in check, but as balanced as it seems the hop profile isn't all that interesting.

Aromatic intensity is average. Not boozy. I detect no off-notes or yeasty notes. Suggests a straightforward simplistic imperial IPA with good balance.

TASTE: Yogurty tang runs throughout, giving this a more memorable hop profile than most imperial IPAs I've tried in recent weeks. Some minor notes of melon and floral hops complement the yogurty character, but that's really it here. No Mosaic-y blueberry, citrusy Citra, floral Centennial, grassy Noble hops, resinous Amarillo, oniony Simcoe, etc. Just yogurt, minor tropical fruit (including pineapple, though it isn't boozy like I usually find pineapple to be in beer), and floral notes.

Simplistic and not over-the-top in terms of hops (when I visited earlier tonight, their hoppiest brew going by IBUs was an imperial stout). Flavour duration is below average, as-is flavour intensity. Depth of flavour is subpar, unfortunately; these hop flavours are nice and their bitterness is well tempered by pale malt sweetness, but they lack oomph.

Balance goes a long way, and that alone made me glad I picked this up. But frankly it drinks more like a really high ABV pale ale than it does an imperial IPA, not really committing as much to its hops as it ought to. (A hipster might call this the inverse of a session IPA).

Knowing it has oats from Interboro's description changes little in terms of what I perceive. English malts? It does have a less sweet bend than I'd anticipate from American malts I guess...but I'd be a pretentious jackass if I pretended to be able to detect the difference. Wheat? Not coming through for me.

TEXTURE: Smooth, wet, somewhat refreshing, slightly overcarbonated, a bit coating, medium-bodied. Not pulpy, scratchy, rough, astringent, harsh, boozy, harsh, oily, or juicy. Acidity is normal. What I dig is its softness - not as great as it could be, but rather good. Doesn't elevate the beer as a whole or accentuate specific notes per se, but it's rather effective.

OVERALL: Interboro hasn't even been around 6 months, and already they're churning out some nice beers. I definitely enjoyed Mad Fat Fluid far more than this, and I think it's telling that what works so well in Mad Fat Fluid - the toned down more mellow hop presence/IBUs compared to most beers in its style - is what holds this back. I like that Interboro is committing to more unique hop combinations than most local breweries (who seem to keep hitting the same note of perceived-as-exotic New Zealand tropical fruit nonsense over and over, possibly with some Mosaic thrown in), but in an imperial IPA you've got to go bigger than this, and depth of flavour has to be there if you want to compete with the greats in the style.

Interboro is playing in the same distribution sandbox as the likes of Hill Farmstead, Other Half, Half Acre, Tired Hands, Lagunitas, Deschutes, Grimm Artisan Ales, and the like. With that in mind, new or not - they've got to up their game if they want to compete as a serious player. That said, if this is how Interboro starts out, I can't wait to see what heights they reach within 1-2 years. Price doesn't affect my rating, but I wouldn't pay 25 cents an ounce for this again if I could help it - drinkable though it may be.

B- (3.38) / WORTHY

 

 

 

 

A: The beer is very hazy pale yellow in color. It poured with a finger and a half high white head that gradually died down, leaving a thin head covering the surface and lots of lacy webs of bubbles coating the sides of the glass.
S: Moderate aromas of piney hops are present in the nose along with notes of grapefruit rind.
T: The taste generally follows the smell and is mostly dominated by piney hops, although not of the resinous nature. There is a moderate amount of bitterness.
M: It feels medium-bodied and rather crisp on the palate with a moderate amount of carbonation. The hops prickle your tongue a little bit.
O: This beer is quite hoppy, but isn't as heavy as most other Imperial IPAs because there isn't much of a malt body. No alcohol is perceptible.

Serving type: growler

 

On tap at brewery.

On tap at Interboro 10/22/16.