Wizards Revenge
New Level Brewing

 

A- This one pours a very nice light coppery/golden color, with just a slight hazing going on. The head is super white, dense and creamy looking, and has retention that is good but not great, settling fairly quickly into a thick-ish layer of foam over top the brew. There are many columns of carbonation rising to the top, but the bubbles are fine and really do lumber their way to the top in hypnotizing fashion. The lacing is very impressive, with puffy clumps of protein clinging to the inside of my glass, giving me a cascade of snow capped mountains to ponder over.

S- Comes with an enticing round of strawberry infused hop bitterness right off the top, but this is not overpowering by any means....just distinct. Underlying aromas of lactose, cream, strawberry syrup sweetness, yet also shows some grainy and/or grassy dryness to help balance things out. I like how this has a medley of aroma vs how some of these are all hops.

T- Love the flavor that of fresh strawberry here, which promotes a natural sweetness, to help balance out a generous, but again, not overpowering, hop character. Creamy strawberry vanilla ice cream blends with dry biscuit/cracker, raw grains and grassy pale malts, which help create the more traditional qualities of an IPA. With ripe berry forwardness, this proves to be quite a delight on the palate!

M/O- Solid medium body, provided by the use of oats, and the carbonation is creamy, allowing full flavors to permeate over the palate.....the 7% alcohol is extremely well hidden and this is quite a sociable drinking brew....no issues having this over the course of an evening. Not sure why this is getting underwhelming grades....this isn't meant to be bitter like a DIPA or the like....read about it on New Levels website...its the perfect IPA for those who hate IPA's!!

Appearance is a slightly hazy, golden color with some peach highlights to it and pours with a finger and a half of loose golden head that has a surprisingly good retention to it and leaves a nice sudsy lacing.

Aroma of sour, under ripe strawberries with a tang of lacto and hint of a weedy hop just underneath the sourness.

Pretty damn sweet off the bat, almost cloyingly so followed by a tart, but decent, real strawberry flavor that unfortunately almost gets a little overwhelmed by the lacto tang on the back-end.

Medium bodied with an average amount of carbonation to it with light hints of toffee and saltine soda crackers to the malt base and a smooth almost creamy texture that seems to coat the mouth.

Finish is surprisingly hoppy with a grassy/ weedy bitterness that is at odds with the almost cloying lactose sweetness on the aftertaste and a lingering slightly oily mouth-feel that leave a ghostly trace of maybe rancid butter, or more likely a bitter, oily, coconut note

At the end of the day, I like to be reminded that I’m drinking a BEER. Way too much sweetness in this offering to make me want to come back for more. I’ll stick with the HB version of this instead.

 

 

8oz glass at Beer Revolution YEG Oliver Square. A 'Strawberry Milkshake IPA'. All righty then.

This beer appears a murky, medium apricot yellow colour, with one skinny finger of weakly puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some decent thin paint job lace around the glass as things slowly progress.

It smells of bready and grainy cereal malt, some tame muddled red berry fruitiness, a damp minerality, and very faint earthy, leafy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and crackery pale malt, ethereal underripe strawberry notes, and more well-understated earthy, musty, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly meek in its perfunctory frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and essentially smooth, with nothing really causing any sort of commotion at this point in the game. It finishes trending dry, the malt bottoming out, but with very little else to fill the lingering void.

Overall - yeah, they claim that 'real strawberries' were used in the production of this offering, but I question the actual number or poundage, because I can barely discern them here. Anyways, a not so hot IPA, when there are much better examples out there on the market.