Tiny Rebel: DEYA: NEIPA (Wales: IPA: 6.8% ABV)
Visual: Clear apricot. Large white head. Becomes hazy on second pour.
Nose: Apple. Crisp hops. Soft apricot. Slight eggplants.
Body: Eggplant. Slightly oily and resinous hops. Prickly bitterness. Quite savoury. Apricot skin. Grapefruit.
Finish: Resinous. Smoke. Slight oak. Light grapefruit. Earthy bitterness. Apricot skin. Dried mango.
Conclusion: Call me a mad, style enforcing, dictatorial fool, but aren’t New England IPAs supposed to be cloudy? I thought that was there whole thing? Am I in bizzaroverse today?
Those were my first thoughts on pouring this – as you can see from the photo, this is crystal clear. Or more correctly was crystal clear. There was still some beer left in the can due to the large head, so I gave it a quick swirl and pour and – there we go, it is now just slightly hazy. Guess the sediment had all gone to the bottom, I was worried for a minute.
Now I am in a kind of bind on this one – It really doesn’t match most NEIPAs in style points. It it clear on first pour, has oily bitterness, has low amounts of fruit character, etc. However, as most people are aware, I am not a huge fan of the standard NEIPA style, so should I be praising it or damning it for lack of style fidelity? Meh, let’s just look at it as the beer in itself it is and see how it goes.
It is quite .. savoury. That is not what I expected. Kind of eggplant to general vegetable heaviness. This does make me wonder if I got a bum can, especially with the clean first pour. The flavours are very dull and just subside into a lacklustre bitterness haze. It feels like it aims for …sigh.. dank, but ends up staid instead. The fruitiness notes you get are a dried apricot skin kind of note, but with none of the juiciness you should get below the skin.
Giving the beer a good swirl does help a bit, bringing out some grapefruit notes, but still the bitterness of the beer feels weird. It is something I have seen in some other cryo hopped beers, a kind of bittiness that seems linked with the vegetable character in a way that doesn’t work for me.
So, Yeah, this is not the NEIPA for me.
Background: It is well established I am not a huge New England IPA fan. However enough people have done a twist on the base style that I have found examples I enjoy, so was not too worried when I went into this DEYA, Tiny Rebel collaboration – the fifth of the seven collaboration beers they did for their seventh birthday. Said most that I have to say on the box set of collaboration beers in my last few posts on those beers, so all I will add is I put on The Eels, Useless Trinkets album which collects their b-sides and odd releases, to listen to while drinking. Not The Eels best work but it is quite soothing to listen to.
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