Brewdog: Albino Squid Assassin (Scotland: Speciality Grain: 7.4% ABV)
Visual: Ruddy brown. Large coffee froth beige head.
Nose: Dried pineapple. Grapefruit. Understated. Pine needles.
Body: Peach. Cinnamon. Chocolate malt drinks. Coconut. Rye crackers. Sweet liquorice touch. Creamy. Moderate to low bitterness. Orange crème and caramel. Marshmallows. Apple.
Finish: Chocolate toffee. Slight spice. Shreddies. Black liquorice bits. Marshmallow. Charring. Higher bitterness. Pineapple.
Conclusion: Took me a few cans of this over a few weeks for me to get a coherent take on it. The first few cans were nice enough but I couldn’t quite get a handle on it.
The rye hit of the beer seemed to vary a bit depending on what time of the day I drank it and what I had been eating before, as is to be expected. For these notes I had not had food for a while before and had it early evening and here the rye seemed restrained and really let the rest of the beer open up.
Early on it still didn’t make it easy to get a handle on the beer as the aroma is pretty restrained. It doesn’t give much information and leaves everything up to the main body.
Thankfully the body rocks it well. I hate using the varied wildcard IPA names for the most part but this tastes (Deep breath) kind of like a brown IPA, but with extra rye spice. The malt base is caramel sweet, the rye spicy, and the hops give a very good range of sweet and fruity flavor. It isn’t that bitter for an IPA, and the sweet toffee very much tastes below its 7% plus abv. Dangerously easy drinking.
The finish following that is ok, but does let the side down a bit. There are occasional liquorice notes that are not well integrated and it is a bit spice heavy here. Not terrible though but not up to the excellent body.
Thankfully the mainstay of the beer is the body, so it manages to ride over those few weak final notes. It definitely doesn’t feel much like a traditional IPA, red, rye, or otherwise. It is more malt heavy with more hop flavor than bitterness. A general easy drinking and fun beer with a tad too high abv for the notes it brings.
Background: Love the artwork on this can, the name is pretty cool as well, if somewhat nonsensical. As opposed to all those other beer names which are actually short aphorisms on the nature of reality. As always I am not an unbiased actor on Brewdog beers. This is described as a *grimace* red rye IPA. Red IPA, of course. I’d probably call it a rye amber ale myself, but rate beer goes with just speciality grain, which seems fair enough for this one. Anyway drunk while listening to some OCRemix stuff from Dynamite Headdy and Gunstar Heroes. I am a geek.
