Tiny Rebel: Welcome To The Party Pal! (Wales: IPA: 6.3% ABV)
Visual: Hazy to cloudy lemon juice color body. Very large white, slightly yellowed, mounded head. Very small bubbled carbonation.
Nose: Coconut. Vermouth touch. White chocolate. Marshmallow. Peppermint.
Body: Peach. Vermouth. Aniseed touch. Melon. Slightly creamy. Coconut. Menthol.
Finish: Melon. Mint – peppermint. Peppery. Slight hop character and bitterness. Marshmallow but dry.
Conclusion: This is … odd. Probably good. Depending on what you want. I mean, it isn’t one I can drink often – it is a whole mess of strong and unusual flavours, but it has my interest. Despite what it says on the can, and therefore how I list it here, It is not an IPA by any recognisable style guideline– the only really IPA like elements are the higher abv, and having some recognisable hop character in the finish.
The most notable elements are a very present melon character, and a decent chunk of coconut. It’s quite creamy, slightly menthol and minty. A whole bunch of unusual flavours mashed up together.
Now, I’ve never had a snowball cocktail. I now presume that this is what they taste like. It definitely has that kind of cocktail, slightly spirity alcohol feel, and similar that matching cocktail sweetness to try and minimise the alcohol presence.
Now, there is a beer touch to it, but only in the finish. That is where you get an underlying hop bitterness and general hop character which draws a line under the more unusual notes of the body.
So, this is a nice bit of fun, if not overly beer like. Think it would wear out its welcome fast if you tried to have several of them, but as a one off oddity, have a party…
Pal!
Background: DIE HARD IS A CHRISTAMAS MOVIE! There, my hat is firmly thrown in the argument arena. Anyway, yeah, we are not even out of November yet and I’m on the Christmas beers. This an oddity of trying to replicate the snowball cocktail in a beer. Even odder trying to replicate it in an IPA. Oh Tiny Rebel you wild wee scamps. It is made with lactose, but I can’t see any other odd ingredients so I’m guessing it is mainly achieved with the main set (albeit with wheat and oats). Weird. Another one grabbed from Independent Spirit. Went with super Christmassy music for this one – Slipknot: We Are Not Your Kind Of People. What? Sums up my Christmas.
