Stone: Delicious IPA (USA: IPA: 7.7% ABV)
Visual: Yellowed clear body with moderate carbonation and a neatly glass filling lemon tinged head.
Nose: Lemon curd on meringue. Cream on peach. Crushed Blackpool rock. Sherbet. Malt biscuits. Kiwi fruit.
Body: Tingling bitterness. Malt digestives. Sherbet lemon and lime sorbet. Creamy. Moderate hop character. Grapes. Grapefruit. Jolly Ranchers. Peach.
Finish: Digestives. Squezed lime. Light hop character. White grapes. Grapefruit. Jolly Ranchers.
Conclusion: I’ll give Stone this – they have an honest naming policy for their beers. Arrogant Bastard was arrogant. Sublimely Self Righteous Ale was sublime, and this – this is delicious.
For a Stone beer it runs on the softer end of the hop bitterness spectrum. Which means for any other brewery it would be hoppy as hell. Anyway, over that… softer.. approach to hops there is a soft creaminess and a delicious (there is that word again) fruity character that builds while the bitterness manages to limit itself to aggressively tingling behind. It results in such a burst of tropical fruit, like an entire packet of Jolly Ranchers blended up and turned into a beer.
The body is wonderfully done, thick enough to bring to mind digestive biscuits layered in cream, all making sure that the smooth fruit flavor and lighter notes never lack for a solid backing to work from.
Despite the… ahem …lighter hop bitterness approach by the end it still leaves a long lasting bitter finish – in fact no element in the finish lets go easily. Despite that, and probably because the hops lean towards the fresher and clearer flavours, the bitterness never gets clingy, and so the beer remains wonderfully drinkable.
So, delicious. Also damn I would love to see a Belgian yeast take on this – i think it would suit the smooth flavours to a tee. If you like IPAs you owe yourself to try this one.
Background: Modesty really isn’t Stone’s thing is it? This IPA made with Lemondroop and El Dorado hops popped up on my radar a few times with Brewdog Bristol and G-LO speaking highly of it. So I grabbed a bottle from Brewdog’s Guest Beer selection. Drunk while listening to a bit of Dethklok – mainly because they have a song called “I Ejaculate Fire”
