Profiled by Ken Carman for professorgoodales.net
Pours a hazy, not clear, SRM 3-4: slightly dark urine, or dirty gold if you prefer. Head faded so fast hardly any time to tell. Pinpoint bubble mixed with pillow and big bubbles. Aromatically somewhat grapefruit. Centennial perhaps? Mouthfeel: harsh hop, brash, even astringent. Pale malt base there but hidden.
This is supposed to be their first high grav, high abv, beer. 7.3 and 83 ibu. That’s quite the achievement in Tennessee where we have been fighting stupid, I repeat “stupid,” abv limitation laws for a long time. I am assuming they got a distilling license: another long lasting fight where a local, Nashville, distillery, had to fight for years to get approval for a tasting room.
The problem here is, even if this were a fresh hop beer: no indication, the 83IBU is more harsh than some way over 100IBU beers I have had. Too long of a boil, perhaps? And there’s a zing to it that wants to rip the tongue a new orifice. The malt is nice but mostly hidden by hops problems that take grassy to a new level of, ah, no: I’d rather not. Soapy too.
There’s a nice high grav malt base, but hop problems make that way too easy to miss. It does fill the mouth and, as a positive, you’d never know of the higher abv. Unfortunately, I’d rather know that than of the harsh hop sense. I have been a fan of beer with IBUs well over 100. This, unfortunately, wouldn’t one of them, even if it was over 100.
I really would recommend latter additions, less of a boil on them, and more hops if you still want the 83 IBU.
