Hop Butcher (2019)

I haven't bought much beer at all lately, but need some beer for some friends coming over for my kids birthday this weekend, so decided to grab some Snorkel Squad. Citra IPA sounds great to me.

 

Could have grabbed some Snoker Squad. Ended up grabbing a 4 pack of Cafe Deth instead.

 

Snorkel* Lol. My phone auto-corrected to Snoker for some reason.

 

Snorkel Squad is the bomb.

 

To be more detailed it's Double Grid without the mosaic flavor....

Supreme Being may be too sweet for pilsner fans. Wasn't dry enough for my liking.

 

Snorkel squad and craniac are both excellent imo.

 

Urbs!

 

Really excited. One of my favorites of theirs from last year. It has a ridiculous passion fruit nose.

 

Yeah, if the can didn't say pilsner there's no way that's what I would have pegged it as. Glad I only had one can.

 

I really enjoyed Snorkel Squad and Craniac over the weekend. I think I'd give the nod to Snorkel Squad as the one I preferred, but both were really easy to drink.

I also had Supreme Being and didn't really find it sweet. I thought it was a pretty good pilsner but I'm nowhere near as good as others as picking out flavors from pilsners.

 

My buddy LOVES Hop Butcher so he picked up a four pack of Galaxy Bowl. I stay away from their IPA's for the most part as they are too sweet for me. I was over at his place and tried one; I had to choke it down, it was that bad. In a moment of truth I did not see coming, he said, "This beer sucks" Yikes, I can't imagine they brew this again.

 

Pretty amazing how polarizing GB is.

 

I'm pretty surprised people find it awful. I thought it was very good but can see people thinking it's just like, a solid NE IPA. I'm just puzzled by those that think it's terrible.

 

If he loves HB, I guess I can see why he'd hate it. It's not as sweet (which is a win, imo), and it tasted a little green when I had a can last week. I'm sitting on my other 3 for this week or next, when I assume it will have evened out. And given that it's always one of their most popular beers (a lot of them sit on shelves now, this one still sells out), they'll definitely be brewing it again as soon as they can.

It really is! There are a host of HB beers I've had that were pretty standard HB-fare to me, and yet everyone was losing their minds. And then there's GB, which I typically really actively like (though admittedly, it's different every time), and half the thread hates it. It's very interesting, and I'd be curious to know what the official aim of the beer is; are they trying to make it differently each time? Is there something inherent in the beer that's making it harder for them to keep it consistent?

 

95% of the time these types of discussions occur, I attribute it to palate variance, but with this round of GB I'm convinced it was can variance, at least in my case. My cans were devolving into pineapple juice soaked cardboard, no way do I believe that's how they intended the beer to be. It happens, no hard feelings. I thought Snorkel Squad was fantastic.

 

EXACTLY KCUnited. There is no way this is palate variance. I drink every beer I open and never throw anything down the drain. No matter what I think of the beer, I can generally understand what the brewer was going for when it was brewed. This has to be can variance as no brewer would intend for a galaxy hopped DIPA to taste like this.

To clarify my previous comment, they will brew Galaxy Bowl again (assuming), but what I meant is that they will have to make changes. You can't let a beer like this get out in the public's hands, it was that bad. ...and yes, pineapple juice soaked cardboard is exactly how I would describe this.

 

It’s partly can variance, but the “good” cans I’ve had were far below previous iterations.

 

That sounds like exactly the palate variance we're talking, or a bad can (or cans). I'm not here to say this has been the best GB batch ever, or my favorite hazy in the city, but at no point while drinking it did I think "holy shit, how did this make it out of the brewery?"

I've had bad cans before (from HB and others), so that's definitely a possibility here.

edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to downplay your opinion; I'm just saying that I didn't find anything in the can I had to be that different from similar beers (HB or otherwise).

 

No worries, I trust your opinion and that is why it has to be can variance. I am a beer lover and drink pretty much anything, I am not very picky. The cans we had, and we each had a separate can, were about as horrific as can be for an IPA. I have no doubt yours were drinkable and enjoyable. As a brewery, you simply can't have that happen because the people who had cans like me, will not be coming back...

 

I actually did really like this batch, had a single on the train, bought a 4-pack and gave 1 to an out-of-town friend. I have one left, so I've had 3 cans and so my guess would be can variation. But that's weird since that doesn't seem to be an issue with other beers of theirs.

I heard they were doing some brewing at 5 Rabbit now, possibly from that?