Elusive: Triple Oregon Trail (England: IIPA: 10% ABV)
Visual: Pale, light yellow gold. Thin white head that leaves suds. Slightest haze to the body.
Nose: Jelly babies. Apple chewy sweets. Orange juice. Lightly resinous. Peach. Grapes.
Body: Oily. Kiwi. Resinous. Pineapple. Slightly dry but sweet. Peach. Medium hop bitterness. Quite thick. Fruit syrup. Vanilla fudge. Lightly sherbety mouthfeel. Mandarin orange. Jelly sweets.
Finish: Jolly rancher hard sweets. Grapefruit. Resinous. Oily bitterness. Light charring. Mandarin orange. Drying. Good bitterness.
Conclusion: West Coast – triple – IPA. An interesting mix. Triple IPAs are generally fucking malt bombs in order to get their high abv going. West coast IPAs tend to be well attenuated and dry with high bitterness. Not an impossible match, but always an interesting one.
This opens so jelly sweet like in the aroma, so the first time I encountered it I was worried it was going to forsake the west coast IPA style. It was very fruity, very jelly sweets. However it did have a good resinous note, so there was a promise of a good hop range, but I was worried it was going to end up much sweeter than I wanted and more east coast style.
So, luckily I was wrong. The body is kind of fruit syrup sweet, but despite that manages to still have a dryness that lets the bitterness play. It is lovely and resinous and oily in the body, leading into a bruising kick of hops in the finish. It isn’t super attenuated, but they definitely have enough that you can still call it a west coast.
The body somehow keeps some of those jelly sweets and fruit syrup flavours despite the dryness, with lots of pineapple and peach freshening it up nicely.
The finish is where it really nails it. Bitter, resinous, now with grapefruit freshness rather than the pineapple style which makes it sparkle more, and west coast dry rather than jelly sweet. Which all gives the perfect end to a bitter, resinous, oily punch.
I’ve respected and enjoyed most of Elusive’s varied takes on Oregon Trail, but this takes the difficult to do west coast TIPA and made it work and with that gained my respect so much. It nailed it so well.
Background: I love me some west coast IPAs and Elusive have done a solid range of different takes on them. I, however do not think I have encountered a west coast Triple IPA before. I would have to search to check, but I think this may be a new one on me. Well, depending on definition – at 10% ABV it lines up with few west coasts I’ve had that call themselves double IPAs or just Imperial IPAs, but any which way sounds fun. Grabbed from Independent Spirit a few times before I finally did notes on it, I kept returning so I already knew , barring a horrible batch accident, that I was going to have fun with this one. Decided to go for some lovely Sisters Of Mercy: Floodland as music to back it, I knew I was going to have a good time, so some cool tunes would make it all the more cool.
