Northern Monk: Patron’s Project 10.02 DDH Raspberry Ripple Doughnut IPA (England: IPA: 6.3% ABV)
Visual: Very bitty filled dark apricot body. Large off white head.
Nose: Raspberry ripple ice cream. Bitty orange juice. Peach. Light hop character. Light tart notes.
Body: Strawberry sherbet. Tart raspberry and hard raspberry sweets. Umami touch. Tangerine. Pink grapefruit. Creamy. Vanilla fudge.
Finish: Hop oils. Gooseberry. Tangerine. Tart apples. Pink grapefruit. Raspberry hard sweets. Melon.
Conclusion: Ok, point one – this has the most sediment I have e..e…ever seen in a beer, and trust me, that covers a lot of weird and wonderful experiences. Point two, this both nails its core concept in some areas and utterly ignores it in others,
The first hits are very obvious raspberry ripple ice cream notes, and then there are various different raspberry imagery hits throughout the beer in an artificial, hard sweet kind of way. However once the hops hit they come in a very different way – lots of green and orange fruit notes – from melon, grapes, gooseberry, tangerine and orange juice. Shoot you even get pink grapefruit notes for variety. Very tart very fresh, very natural fruit – it is a heck of a contrast.
Everything initially comes across fresh and sherbety. Then comes the tart notes, then finally the creamy thickness. I’m not sure if I would say that this calls to doughnuts, but that is just because it changes so much and pushes so much out of it. The one constant throughout though is the sweetness, with the fresh character coming close second for time present, but the sweetness is the always present characteristic – be it fruit, sweet hard sweets, vanilla or whatever it is always pushing something sweet at you.
Over time the elements start to merge together – the tart notes become backing to sweet raspberry and vanilla icing, backed by strawberry sherbet. You even see some, but nor much of the IPA backbone – some hop oils that bring light bitterness, but generally it is just a backing.
It is an intense and strange beer – not one to have often as it is bloody sweet – but had now and again as a one off – yeah I love it as that.
Background: Another local collaboration beer by Northern Monks – this one with the Temple Coffee and Doughnuts shop. From a quick google it seems that there was no actual doughnut used in making this, despite the level of bittiness of the beer giving that impression. I have been informed, and checked that if you take the labels off the cans, there is a ton of additional info on the beer and the collaborators on the inside of the label and on the can. Which is cool, but now I’m wondering what I missed out on the other Patron’s Project beers by not looking inside the labels. Ah well. Also with the level of sediment I was quite worried this would make the glass a total shit to clean – thankfully most of the sediment didn’t stick, so it wasn’t that bad. This is another one from Independent Spirit and I put on Nightwish – Dark Passion Play while drinking. My mate says the albums with a different singer are better for enjoying Nightwish, so will have to give them a try some time.
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