3 Floyds Brewing (2023)

Man you guys live in such polar extremes. I haven't had a packaged beer by an established brewery I'd think of as that bad since...I don't even know when.

 

I’ve always thought 3F haze was lacking and I’m avoiding the mixed packs for that reason. I don't care for the various War Pigs beers I’ve tried either.

 

I mean, it's not Tree House or anything, but it's certainly not "awful." Also, it's not like FFF has a huge sample size.

But that does make me think of other breweries who people rave about, particularly the current Fidens hype right now. People are going apeshit over this haze as if it's some sort of revelatory experience, so of course when I finally had it and found that it tasted just like your run of the mill Other Half, Monkish, or Trillium whatever, I was unsurprised.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy me some haze, but I don't think it's the pinnacle of beer, and don't understand people who act like it is. It's most especially annoying when they act as if this suddenly new place breaking onto the scene is doing something substantially better or different than all the rest. There are local breweries near me doing haze just as well that no one gives a shit about (including myself), which maybe is why I'm not impressed with anyone doing haze "well." Frankly, it's an easy way to cover up a whole bunch of other shit, whereas Barbarian takes a lighter hand on it, which I can see is disappointing to most, but shows that the beer itself isn't actually trash. But again, of course, that misses the whole point that true hop slurry fans are looking for.

Some of those beers are so chock full of anti-inflammatories they fuck my ear canals up...or something

 

No I tried to do some research to find out but couldn't find anything.

 

I guess it’s the “lighter hand” that doesn’t do much for me. A basic pale ale (like Two Hearted) is about as light as I’ll go with hoppy beers. When I’m looking for something lighter it’s going to be some kind of lager.

EDIT: I realize Two Hearted considers itself IPA. I suppose this is where it all gets blurry.

 

Suppose its just a difference of palate. I've had numerous drain pours from even my favorite brewery TG, latest being that crap Dino beer. Hazies IMO are easy to get wrong, and I feel I was spoiled from the beginning with perfection beers like Sue, Pompeii, King, and Sosus. So when I have something like Barbarian, it just taste like a weird mess. I feel that way with a lot of the NEIPA's I try. They are chasing a trend, where as Mike was just making good beer...

 

I think there's a lot of rose-colored nostalgia with beers like that, though. When Pseudo first came out it might have been a pretty unique experience for most drinkers at the time, but that's not the same thing as being substantially better than what else is available now or even what TG makes still. It may be more memorable, and positively so, simply by being on the vanguard of a nationwide palate shift.

There's no way any of us can do this, but if you could go back in time and grab a fresh pour of Pseudo and bring it back to compare it with what they make now, not only would it probably be harder to tell the difference than you think, but you might even find that today's is better than yesterday's. Because there is so much competition on that front, where everyone and their mother has refined this style through process while amplifying its characteristics, I'm more on the side of our demands becoming very particular, and in some cases unreasonable (pushing some breweries to just relent to throwing fruit puree into their hazies in an ill-advised attempt to satiate that hunger).

But again, there's no way for any of us to actually prove that, so I'm not trying to deny that some beers don't satisfy your personal tastes today, but perhaps your bar has risen much higher than it was in 2011.

 

After revisiting HLF and letting it sit an hour to warm up, I have to say it is still a muddled mess to me. I didn’t get the dole pineapple as there was nothing sweet in this beer. Tons of pine- it’s like a hazy west coast ipa and a thick west coaster is not pleasant. Needs to be sweeter and and fruitier. FFF knocked it out of the park with their pilot system hazy Lunar Throne last year. Wish they could have replicated that hazy juice bomb for distro.

 

Unless I'm old and gray and drunk, which I may or may not be, when Pseudo Sue first came out it was a delicious beer comparable to Zombie Dust. Not a haze at all? Then I was excited to try it again after a hiatus, and nearly spit it out, because it wasn't the same beer. TG absolutely ruined that beer (in my opinion) in chasing the hazy trend - why not just keep the same Pseudo and make a new haze beer under a different recipe / name? And don't get me started on King Sue, because they ruined that beer, too

Get off my lawn rant over.

 

Though I did have some fairly early pours, I obviously never had the very first runs of PS, but Clark loves to insist that the NEIPA was invented in Iowa... particularly stressing the I. Even if it's sometimes tongue-in-cheek, I think he genuinely believes it.

Further, most of the original NEIPAs weren't thoroughly hazy. One reason Alchemist beers still say drink from the can to this day is frankly because of their ugly fish food displays. Hill's Edward, as well as early Tree House, were also a bit in between as far as appearance, as well as more bitter. While Edward's haze has had ebbs and flows, it's always been less hazy than most of their other IPAs, being more comparable to SNPA than PS, to my palate.

All that said, whenever I hear people criticize hazies or "less than hazies" like PS or Edward as not what they once were, it makes me genuinely curious as to what the preferred, once superior characteristics were. I don't ever see these critics seeking out solid WC style IPAs (I drink my fair share of Fat Heads!), and often they're looking for juicier, danker or hazier NEIPA, so I'm not sure what that ideal middle ground actually is that might have existed, and whether anyone is really demanding it, or producing it to satisfy such demand.

 

So I think there's a little bit of confusion here. When PseudoSue was a beer made in Iowa and sold in bombers at the brewery it looked like thick orange juice. Was definitely one of the first 5 hazy IPAs I ever had. Then they had it contract brewed by AB at some facility in FL where it got mass distro in cans. That beer was a clear Citra Pale Ale very similar to Zombie Dust in some ways, but less bitter for sure.

When they moved production back to Iowa the beer went back to being a hazy IPA after a few rounds of trial and error where some of the beer did end up clearing up a tiny bit.

 

I hear the same criticism with some half acre hoppy beers that were once clear and are now more opaque and I they are tasting as good as ever. Big fan of TG hops as well. I suspect it is just NEIPAs made it socially acceptable for beers to look dirty and it afforded brewers a chance to save some time and effort by not having to get every last hop sediment to drop out in their super hopped ipas.

 

Unless you’re getting that hop “burn” from a poorly executed example, the haze isn’t actually from hop sediment. It’s suspended grain protein and if you’re lucky polyphenols from hop oil. The yeast strain plays a big role in this and brewers spent some time playing around to achieve the look and learn that the timing of the dry hop additions also makes a difference. Some (Tired Hands) even added flour and fruit pectins directly.

 

Hmm I don't think so. I had a bomber of PseudoSue in early 2013 and it was a clear beer, like Zombie Dust. Maybe a slight haze, but nothing like the opaque juice bombs we see. Though if you check old BA reviews people report it looking hazy like Orange Juice. Maybe it used to drop clear? The bomber I had was certainly more clear from what I recall. This was before Florida. Either way it was delicious.

King Sue on the other hand has always been hazy.

 

IIRC, it was Brewhub. I remember when those cans first hit IL. People were looking for the codes that indicated it was IA cans and not the FL ones. After everyone got a taste of the contract brewerd stuff it just sat everywhere.

 

I still don't think this is entirely accurate. I remember having to go to WI to get my clear PseudoSue, in fact a friend who works at a liquor store used to bring me cases at cost.

When TG finally hit IL it was after the giant production facility in Iowa was up and running and the first few batches of Sue were not great. Something I alluded to in another post. Those cans definitely sat for a while when people realized how inconsistent the first 3 months or so of Sue cans were in IL. I remember scouring the packaging to make sure it didn't say "Brewed by TG in Iowa and Florida" or some shit. They did not, they said and still say "Proudly Brewed in Iowa" or whatever.

 

It's a bizarre take to consider Two Hearted as anything other than a pure American IPA. It's not "blurry" at all. Two Hearted is an IPA, end of.

 

Goes without saying, but OG Psuedo Sue was not nearly the beer it is today. (I think it was much better) Drinking PS back in 2013, I reminded me much more of what Brickstone APA was winning medals for than what ZD was at the time. Both PS and APA were softer around the edges and less bitter than ZD. This is 2013/14. Both probably had a little more residual sweetness than ZD did at that point.

The PS got the contract brew schedule down in Florida and it basically turned into a bad version of west coast ipa. When TGs zillion dollar expansion was finished, they pushed all of their hoppy beers into the hazy realm. I remember have the last fresh keg of clear Pompeii at beer cellar, drinking pints of it frustrated that it would never return. This is 2017ish I believe.

 

Yeah no doubt at all which is why I edited that immediately, but looking back it was a very incomplete thought. The blurriness was a reference to my perception of it as “light” even though it’s 7%, lol. I was trying to make a point about comparative drinkability vs. hazies which I realize I didn’t even come close to.

 

My first Sue was 2015, and a homebrew forum description of Sue from 2013 matches your description. A clear, less bitter, Citra Pale Ale. This review from 2015 shows a hazy but not orange juicy beer in 4 packs of 12oz bottles.

https://madison.com/toppling-goliath-pseudosue/article_f45ec79b-1d5c-5686-82ea-4635763246c4.html

My pour came from a bomber. And my memory is of a very bright hazy beer. I hadn't had much haze by that point and remember being impressed by that color. But perhaps my memory is hazier than the beer I drank.

EDIT: Should also say that from my Untappd check-ins February of 2017, IL does start getting the FL made Sue. December of 2017 is when the Decorah cans start showing up.