Brewdog: IPA Is Dead: Pioneer (Scotland: IPA: 7.2% ABV)
Visual: Pale yellow, slightly hazy. Small off white head that leaves lots of suds. Some carbonation mid body.
Nose: Flour and fresh dough. Soft lemon sherbet. Stewed dates.
Body: Pepper. Stewed apricots and dates. Thick feel. Flour. Fruit sugars. Golden syrup touch. Moderately dry.
Finish: Pepper. Solid bitterness and hop character. Soft jelly sweets. Flour. Vanilla pods. Dry pumpkin. Pine needles. Quite dry overall. Chocolate toffee late on in the beer.
Conclusion: Interesting. This ended up being a drier IPA than first impressions would lead you to believe.
The beer seems to have two main poles – the first is a thick, sweet, stewed fruit character. The other is a dry, well attenuated flour and peppery character. Somehow it manages to incorporate both in one beer. Possibly by involving wizards. Invisible wizards.
Since this my first of the 2015 IPA is Deads I’m not quite sure how much of that I can attribute to the hop character and how much I can attribute to the base recipe. I may look into this more in later sets of notes on the series. Either way this is interesting – there is bitterness in the finish, but for the most part this really is not that bitter for an IPA. Not a bittering hop at a guess. (Huh: Google says it is “Dual Use” but brings a mild bitterness. Makes sense). The stewed fruit is tasty but not that explosive – it has a kind of thick, slow sweetness. It ends up making for a very fruit pie kind of beer, especially with the flour and dough notes standing is for crust imagery.
It’s pleasant, if heavy feeling – like a stodgy base of a beer. I’m enjoying it but the thick characteristics could get overly heavily quite quickly. I’d guess that this is a hop that benefits more from careful combination use than single hop. A reasonable start, and bodes well for IID 2015 even if it is not overly special itself.
Background: IPA IS DEAD! Woo. Brewdog’s single hop series, which, with one years exception, has been a good set for finding out about exactly what a hop brings to a beer. This, Pioneer, is a British hop. The Brit hops tend to be the nice surprise of the set, tasting much different to the earth and soil heavy stereotype. Drunk while listening to the chilled out podcast Spektrmodule – number 40 to be exact. As always I am not an unbiased actor on Brewdog beers.
