Surly Furious: Am I Missing Something?

Furious is good, abrasive is great

 

Not sure what to say other than sometimes the hops really pop to me(even taking into consideration of the canned date) and others they are more muted. I do find this more frequently on tap than I do a can - yes I understand that might be due to the bar/restaurant.

When it's on though, I absolutely love it and this is the case more than not.

 

I only really drink Furious from the can, and presumably Surly is filling its kegs from the same place it fills it's cans. Again, I drink Furious fairly often and have never noticed any inconsistencies, but that's me, some folks are really good at picking up on subtle nuances, super tasters I think they are called.

 

This thread really confuses me, as Furious is in no way an average beer. I can understand if someone isn't into a more robust malt backbone, but the hop profile is still fantastic.

I have never found Furious to be anything but a great beer either, granted I rarely have this beer on tap other than fresh at the Surly Tap Room. Every can I've drank (lots) has tasted delicious.

 

Gotta say that that is a pretty spot on assessment of Furious.

 

Can someone tell me why this thread is in the midwest forum? This looks like FIB's bitching again. I go to the great lakes forum to see that! Also, Furious is a sexy red ale. Always has, always will be,

 

I think the thread started out in the Beer Talk forum.

 

Look on the bright side, Chicagoans are now right in the middle of my favorite mixer, 1/2 and 1/2 Furious and Two Hearted. I call it a Who Farted, but some say Heart of Fury...

 

Everybody has different tastes I guess. I love Furious, Abrasive, Heady, Zombie, etc. Everybody seems really excited about PsuedoSue. It just seems too one dimensional to me. I love the Citra but it could really use some bittering hops. But that's not the beer they wanted to make. Didn't think Pliny was anything special. Everybody has different tastes.

 

To qualify my own experiences, I have rarely had Furious in cans, so I am talking very specifically to keg Furious. And again, I can tell line issues, old kegs, etc. and it has never come off like that. Also, when I look across my experiences with other Surly beers on tap (Bender, Coffee B and Cacao B), it isn't too hard to recognize that there are consistency issues across several of their beers. I have even had batches of Bender where appearance and mouthfeel have gone from a deeper (but see through) brown, all the way to a solid black, approaching porter/stout appearance and mouthfeel. And I have noticed that some bars and customers have even referred to it as a stout, which I am sure comes straight from their experience of what they drank at one tie or another. I had so many different versions of Bender, that I still have no idea what the "real" Bender is supposed to look like.

 

Furious packs an amazing amount of flavor for it's ABV. There are plenty DIPA's that don't carry that much flavor.

And the way the citrus and piney hops work with the Scottish malt is just fantastic IMO. I think of it as a fantastic fall beer.

 

I feel like when this was first came out this was an American IPA. Now the style has shifted towards more of a West Coast IPA.

 

i enjoy Furious more on tap than from the can

 

I don't understand the comparisons to an IPA, definitely not one in my book. I've never had any problems with Furious, always a good go to beer.

 

When I first had it, when I was in an out of this area for business from CA, I would tell people that there was this new Minnesota brewery making a lighter version of Stone's Arrogant Bastard. That was exactly what it reminded me of and like Arrogant Bastard, it is a beer that has elements of several different styles, but doesn't fall comfortably into any one style. Arrogant Bastard has that one extra percent ABV, which helps it get categorized as an American Strong Ale, but I don't know what I would call Furious. And again, when you get into the consistancy issue with this beer, from one batch to another, anyone could lean toward a red ale on one batch and toward an IPA on another. Personally, I think that color alone prohibits it from being an IPA, simply because an IPA is a hopped up Pale Ale and there is no way that you could look at Furious and think that by lowering the hops, that you could ever call it a Pale Ale.

Also, go back and look at the very first review shown on BA, for this beer. Even by that review it sounds like the style was not originally listed on here (or discussed by Surly) as an IPA, but as an amber ale. To quote Feloniousmonk's extremely prophetic opening to that review

"There will be quibbles, arguments, teeth-gnashing, and bare-fisted brawling over the style choice, but I am going with what the brewers lean towards, although they admit it's not quite an "amber ale" like any other. There was talking of calling it an IRA, or "Imperial Red Ale", a humorous reference to violence in Ireland, but I'm glad they didn't. (note: style now changed to "American IPA"...everyone okay with that now?)"

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13014/28203/?view=beer&sort=&start=1300

 

I feel the same way about Furious as I do Alpha King. Both are solid beers but because they are the flagship beers of two awesome craft breweries they definately get more love than they deserve. I will buy both on tap when at a restaurant and options are limited but never consider buying them in cans/bottles and bringing them home.

 

My thoughts exactly.

Also, something else that I have noticed over the past year were breweries specifically releasing new beers or limited beers that were being described as "hoppy amber" ales. Alpha King and Furious are two excellent examples of beers (Nugget Nectar also comes to mind) that have been around for a while, already showing the potential for popularity of this "style." But I actually think that the timing of these newer hoppy ambers that we have been seeing, are a natural presumption that there would be a market, given the popularity of IBA (or Black IPA's or Cascadian dark or whatever the naming preference). There was a wide expanse between the malt character of IPA's and IBA's, so of course one could easily assume a target audience for something with a malt character that fell somewhere in-between. And of course west coast breweries that have been hopping up everystyle have also already proven to have success doing this, from breweries like Lagunitas to Green Flash to Bear Republic and on and on. Maybe we will eventually see the addition of an India Amber Ale (IAA)

 

Another thing that seems to get lost on people is the age of some of these beers. When Furious came out (7?) years ago, it had fewer peers in its class than it does now. In a way, it's like the 21 year old picking up a bottle of SNPA and saying, "this is okay, but (insert hot new 2013 hop) pale ale is way better". Those 3,000 reviews for Furious didn't just show up yesterday.

FWIW, I don't drink as much Furious as I used to, but am still happy to order a glass here and there. Then again, having some actual malt character along with my hops isn't a negative to me .

 

Wait, a breweries flagship brand inherently gets more love than it deserves? What on earth does that even mean? Seems to me that a beer becomes a flagship brand due to the love it gets. What are we, a bunch of beer hipsters summarily dismissing certain brands simply because they are popular?

 

Another peek behind the curtain for everyone. I did list it as an amber ale, and Todd Haug asked me to change it to IPA due to all the feedback they'd gotten from people who said it's too hoppy for an amber/red.
Now, everyone says it's too malty for an IPA.
It is what it is, people.
And I'm pretty glad a ton of people love it, still.