XX IPA
Big Rock Chop & Brewhouse

Reviewed from notes. The appearance was a golden color with a frothy white head. Slow dissipation, some lace. The aroma had some resin/bitter pine, light clove and some grapefruit and mango fruitiness. Good sturdy malt backbone with some caramel/biscuit/toffee qualities. The flavor started fruity sweet with a little bit of bitter and a little bit of spice. Nice little blended sort of aftertaste of malts and hops. Finish was the same. The feel was about a medium on the body with a decent sessionable to sipping sort of quality about it. Carbonation felt fine. Overall, good DIPA, definitely a Midwest DIPA.

 

Had this on tap as Bonnie's Raggedy Ass Imperial IPA.

A - A yellowis orange beer with a pretty nice white head. Some decent lace and stick left on the side.

S - Tons of butter on this one, there is a lot of diacetyl in this one, smells a lot like butterscotch. Some bittering grapefruit on the end seems to be the primary hops focus.

T - Taste is a lot like the nose, tons of butter, some pale malts. Really, there is just so much butter on this one. It's initially not bad, particularly if you like butterscotch. Lots of grapefruit with a touch of citrus sweetness and some solid bitterness on the end. This actually gets kind of fatiguing and hard to drink. Backbone gets exceptionally strong making the butter taste like sweet cream, combination of this and the grapefruit just keeps getting harder to drink.

M - Medium bodied with lots of carbonation.

O - Guess this was a medal winner at GABF or some beer festival, at least that's what they told me. Had some appropriate bitterness, but with all the butter it's just not a great DIPA. on the plus side, alcohol seems to be well hidden.

About a finger's worth of off-white foam, average retention, gets down to the surface and keeps a thin coating across, moderate lacing at best. Dark amberish orange color, quite translucent and hazy, about as much brown hue as red, bubbles within shoe good activity. From when you first pop the lid the pink grapefruit, tangelo citrus jumps right out at you, extremely dominant component, even the pine sap, rose petal, nectarine, guava and apricot fruit stay two steps back the whole way, deep underneath you can get some milk chocolate, cocoa and raisin bread, no bitter herbaceous notes. Full-bodied, the carbonation makes it semi-fluffy and easily pushes it out across the whole palate. Here you get more bitterness from the hops, a welcome counter weight to all that pink grapefruit, orange, lemon citrus. The pine, flower aspects crisper. By the same token, the malty chocolate, hard toffee candy flavors pushed some further into the background. Retains full weight through the finish, might even consider it a bit boozy as in contributing to the push forward. Citrus lover's delight.

[Note: No "official label" on bottle just white printer label around neck. Indicates 2010 vintage, no ABV mentioned. Assume XX means Double/Imperial IPA, drinks like one. No response from email to brewery for info. Acquired in trade.]