Full Moon: Say Play Cold IPA (Thailand: Cold IPA: 4% ABV)
Visual: Hazy lemon juice body, with a solid, good sized bubbly white head.
Nose: Pineapple. Clean. Light grapefruit. Slightly wheaty. Dried banana.
Body: Slightly thin. Dried mango, Resinous bitterness. Dried pineapple peppery. Brown bread. Attenuated dry character. Leaden hopping.
Finish: Peppery. Slightly leaden hop bitterness that becomes more leaden over time.
Conclusion: Ohhh a cold IPA, now that is a new style that I love, so how does this one do?
Initially, it was pretty good. A light, fresh citrus aroma, quite clean feeling, with some rounding notes. Nothing too fancy here in the aroma but it set the stage well.
The body has similar pineapple notes, now with some mango thrown in, but in a more dried fruit way. Now, to me the best Cold IPA style is a lager meets a wast coast IPA, so attenuated and dry is generally a good thing by me.
But…
Here it feels more like the drier low malt character that I would associate with a badly made session IPA, rather than the crisp dryness of a well made west coast IPA, so the body can’t properly handle the hops laid over it, resulting in an unpleasant leaden dry character to the bitterness that feels harsh instead of enjoyable.
Looking at the can this is described as “Low carb” and is quite low abv for a cold IPA, which I feel probably explains a lot of that roughness and the occasional thin character. A pity, as the ones at its core it seem good, but it feels like it has been kneecapped by the brewing choices to make it low abv and low carb. I feel brewed up to six percent abv this could have a decent beer in here, but as in I would say avoid.
Background: Another beer from my Thailand trip, this was, in fact the first beer I grabbed – found at the first 7/11 I went to shortly after arriving in Bangkok – but I didn’t drink it until a few nights later. Not the best beer glass, as you can see in the picture, but I did what I could while traveling (I will admit I had forgotten at this point that I had packed one of my own small glasses for this very use, I blame jetlag). It is listed as a low carb beer, sooo guessing they did something different in brewing to make that? Less malt? I have to admit no idea on that side, google tells me they generally are made by leaving little residual sugar in fermentation, which matches what I encountered in the notes. Not much else to add, didn’t know much on the brewery going in, but it seems common in most big chain stores around the country so guessing a larger players of the Thai craft scene.