The Lost Abbey Introduces Merry Taj IPA

Their take on Celebration Ale?

 

They do call it spicy...

 

Hopefully it'll be bottle conditioned like Wipe Out and have three fingers of trub in each bottle.

 

Mmmm, WipeOut and Mongo Trub...

 

For as much as I'm a LA fanboy - I'm not too excited about this.

While I realize that Port is hop-focused, I'd liked the separation and focus on the more Belgian-like styles. I'm not really sure why it bothers me, but as someone who is not a hugeee hop head I'd been happy with what they were putting out.

Honestly, I would have liked to see them introduce a new dubbel or something

 

I'd rather they focus on expanding their sour program. But I have a feeling they had some extra hops leftover from last year and wanted to brew an IPA for that side of the brand.

 

Meritage like Heritage!

 

Appears not to be the case - 2nd graph from the release posted above said they are using hops harvested in September.

 

Ah, you're right. I should have read the whole press release. Sounds more like their take on Celebration then.

 

I agree with the sour program, give us some new interesting, low alcohol (5-7% ABV) sours with a pale base and some new fruits, blends, interesting barrels, etc. Lost Abbey, you were at the forefront of the sour game, and ahead of your time, but other breweries are catching up (ie. Crooked Stave, Hill Farmstead, Sante Adairius, etc). San Diego needs more quality interesting sours.

 

I'd say not only caught up, but have surpasses on most levels. Most LA hype still hinges on older releases or releases that occur maybe once or twice a year. CS, HF, SARA and others are producing quality sours almost year-round.

 

I agree.

 

While I'm definitely in favor of more sours, I'm not sure I entirely agree with this sentiment. This year they've put out Cuvee de Tomme, Red Poppy, Framboise de Amorosa, Veritas 012, Duck Duck Gooze, Cable Car, Sister Mary Rita and Kool Aid. Other than Sister Mary Rita, I'd say those all ranged from very good to excellent. CdT, Red Poppy and FdA don't get a lot of hype anymore but they're still very good and pretty easy to acquire when they come out.

I'll leave HF and CS out of the discussion due to my limited experience with them, but I don't think SARA deserves to be in the conversation yet. I admire them and think they're doing some great stuff but it's super limited and a little overhyped. I've had Love's Armor, Cask 200, West Ashley and Farmhouse Noir and they were all good but not as good as the best of Lost Abbey.

 

I am not comparing V012, DDG, and Cable Car directly to West Ashley or Cask 200, but I will if someone wants to do a bottle share of all of those beers at once, I'm in . I am stating the fact that there are new breweries with new sours, and us consumers would like Lost Abbey to produce more solid sours. That is all.

 

Fair enough and I'll never complain about more sours. As much as we joke about Red Barn, I wouldn't mind seeing them experiment with it and put out some different versions of that.

And I may have overstated my point. I was just trying to say that it's not really fair to put CS, HF, and SARA up on a pedestal with LA below them when LA is putting out some good regular sours in pretty high volume (CdT, FdA, Red Poppy) and some very good sours in more limited batches (DDG, V012, CC).

 

It should bother you for obvious reasons: Port beers sell for less than Lost Abbey ones do across the board.

 

This is true lol - but for the most part I enjoy LA more than Port (the exception being Old Viscosity)

 

Lost Abbey is still at the forefront of sour beers. They brew beer for themselves and you are welcome to try if you are willing to pay the price. But i wouldn't judge them because their staff knows more than any of us about beer.