Candle Burner
Wellington Brewery

 

 

 

 

 

355 ml bottle served cold into a pint glass. Party of the Welly Re-Booted mixed pack No. 5. Cost came to $2.75 CDN for the bottle. I love the fact that the recommended glassware is a coffee mug.

Appearance - Pours a mostly clear, rusty peach colored brew. Some visible carbonation and topped by just under a finger of white head. Moderate retention and no lacing to speak of.

Smell - hints of coffee as well as tropical fruits, mandarin orange is most visible fruit, but a medley of other fruit aromas are in there as well like pineapple and grapefruit. If anything reminds me of a tropical black IPA in terms of aroma.

Taste - Some coffee up front that swiftly transitions to orange and tangerine flavors. Quite sweet mid-sip after the brush of coffee, but finishes with orange peel and grapefruit pith.

Mouthfeel - Medium-heavy bodied, very dry finish, carbonation is moderate and the beer finishes with a little bit of crispness while also maintaining a stickiness inside the mouth if that makes any sense.

Overall - A pretty solid IPA with good flavors and with the subtle yet not subtle coffee flavors in there, makes for an interesting taste. Certainly a nice addition to their Rebooted Pack this year and with their staple Imperial Stout and a Returning favourite in Spice Odyssey, candle Burner makes this a pretty damn good mixed pack that isn't too bad cost wise either.

 

355 mL bottle from the LCBO; one of two new brews included in their most recent mixed 4-pack. Best before Jan 13 2019 and served slightly chilled.

Pours golden-amber with a lightly hazed body; just over one finger's width of foamy, off white-coloured head rises to the surface, then dissipates within the next five minutes or so. A smooth coat of lovely lacing has been imprinted onto the glass, while a bubbly collar of froth survives on amidst a few patchy islands of soapy film. As a genuine coffee addict, I immediately noticed (and appreciated) the aroma of coffee beans with my first sniff; upon deeper inspection, I'm also getting hints of orange, grapefruit and floral hops, as well as some subtle pale malt graininess, but their footprints are positively minute compared to that of the java.

Quite good, but I don't know if I'd say it tastes great... there's some grainy, bready malt sweetness present, but in terms of intensity it's a distant third place behind the coffee and hops. The former of those two ingredients is an ever-present element of the flavour profile, which has its ups and downs - it clashes mid-sip with fruity hints of (indeterminate) citrus and tropical fruit, but the roasty coffee bean astringency soon settles into a more co-operative relationship with the earthy, floral bitterness that wraps up the back end. Coffee flavours persist briefly into the aftertaste, and I'd be disappointed if they didn't. Medium-light in body, with moderately low carbonation levels that gently agitate the tongue, providing just a bit of bite to its otherwise smooth texture.

Final Grade: 3.87, a B+. Wellington's Candle Burner Coffee IPA doesn't look too much like a cup of Joe, but its smell and taste more than make up for its superficial paleness. It works well enough for the most part - the hops are in the shadow of the coffee, which I didn't mind, but I still feel a little bit more hop complexity (or intensity) would give this beer some needed character. Possibly worth bringing into the LCBO as a single - there's presumably a market for these beers, and there aren't a whole lot of other coffee IPAs on the shelves at the moment.

Way better than expected.