Equilibrium: Super Fractal Laboratory Set (USA: IIPA: 10% ABV) Visual: Cloudy peach skin to apricot coloured body. Medium sized bubbled whit head that leaves suds. Nose: Cake sponge. Muggy hop bitterness. Pine needles. Custard slice. Mango. Apricot skin. Grapes. Body: Mango. Pomegranate. Cake sponge. Thick. Peach. Marshmallow but dry. Custard. Honey syrup. Watermelon jolly ranchers. Resinous. Gherkin like sour touch. Hop oils Finish: Pine needles. Muggy bitterness. Granite touch. Savoury, lettuce like touch at the end. Honey. Conclusion: This feels heavy. Thick, kind of savoury and with a bready to cake nature. It is kind of sticky as well – the fruity feels dried but in a way that clings to the tongue. There is sweetness, predominantly expressed as a honey, again sticky notes that hangs around for a long time at the end. However, considering the abv it comes across moderately attenuated in a way that I would not expect. Not dry, but restrained, drier than the malt load would suggest. The bitterness is, again, moderate. Some resinous character, a good level of bitterness but slightly muggy rather than prickly, and slightly oily but not the main character It isn't lacking in bitterness, but it isn't exactly the front either. The front is instead an odd, slightly muggy, slightly dry, fruit set of unusual notes; Rocking with pomegranate and mango more than the more common choices. There are hints of sweeter release, but generally it is kind of savoury, slightly soured unusual notes with some dry sweetness. It gets a bit sweeter over time and feels much more clinging – the flavours and hops last long, long into the finish. It is decent, but a tad too sticky kind of clingy for me. The thick body and dryness keeps every flavor around, but without those notes that pop out to make it feel more welcome and complex over time. Still, decent – lots of flavor and identity, just not quite expressed to a style of my preference. Background: Ohh, a new brewery to me from the USA. With the smaller USA craft brewers being pretty rare in the UK these days I was again happy to snap up something to try. There seemed to be a lot of variants of this Super Fractal beer , so being a science fan I grabbed the Laboratory Set variant and thought I would see where it would take me. Yep, a very formal selection method used. This is called Triple IPA, but I have to admit I always thought 10% fell under the high end of a double IPA. Feh, I'm listing it under IIPA anyway for ease, but I am fairly sure 10% abv is not in the triple range. The base beer – Super Fractal is described as having a simple grain bill, the can doesn't list ingredients so I'm not exactly sure what that entails, to which this adds massive Citra hopping. Cool. Ok, let's see how that goes. Went with Ulver: Flowers of Evil when drinking – a brighter sounding but still musically complex work from the always great Ulver. Oh I bought this at Independent Spirit.
