Frau Gruber: Hybrid Moments (Germany: IIPA: 8.3% ABV)
Visual: Mango milkshake color and thick, cloudy character to the body. A yellow-white creamy head.
Nose: Bitty hop character. Light resin and oily hop character. Moderate bitterness. Mango. Slight toffee. Fresh white bread.
Body: Creamy. Peach. Banana custard. Slightly oily. Sweet, light strawberry. Prickly tingle. Mild golden syrup. Some pineapple.
Finish: Light resinous character and bitterness. Banana. Hop oils. Light charring. Golden syrup. Prickly hops. Sweet pineapple. Some tart grapefruit.
Conclusion: Goddammit! Cans should be legally required to say if they are a New England IPA on the packaging, on pain of loss of kneecaps and life for failing to do so. I was very deliberately trying to avoid the NEIPA style when I picked this one from the line up.
Sigh.
Thankfully this has some bitterness to it, but more importantly a moderate use of resinous hop character that gives a nicely IPA feel to the beer. I can live with that. I just would have preferred to have been prewarned what I was buying. Sooo, NEIPA ranting aside….
This is thick and fairly sweet and creamy. Lots of those sweeter notes are expressed as sweet fruit – with peach, banana and the sweetest beer expression of pineapple I have seen for a very long time. However what starts as a low bitterness matched to good hop oiliness and resin character early on gets more and more bitter as time progresses until it is a solid kick backing that sweetness. I approve.
It’s still that creamy thick thing that was not the beer style I was looking for, so take that into account, but it is a decent beer, even with that said.
So, uses the creamy style, but manages a surprising level of hop bitterness by the end. From a discrete hop touch in the sweet fruit dominated front, it feels like very good progress into a mouth filled with bitter, resinous hops by the end.
It is a sweet milkshake IPA that punishes you with resinous hop pain as a reward. Not quite what I was looking for but enjoyable all the same.
Background: There were three Frau Gruber Double/Imperial IPAs on the shelves at Independent Spirit. So I looked at them and decided that this, with its BRU-1, Galaxy, Motueka and Mosaic BBC hops was most likely to be to my tastes. Also, I thought it was unlike to be a NEIPA. I was wrong on that last point. Can image was decent stylised image and eye catching, and Germany has a good brewing heritage so I had high hopes. Also, Gruber, Ya know, Like Die Hard. I as always, am a simple person. Anyway, had just been to see IDLES recently, and discovered a new great artist called Billy Nomates, so was listening to her music during the drinking session.
