Verdant: Bale Breaker: Stoup: Little Summer Beer Bash 25: Collab 2: WC IPA (England: IPA: 7% ABV)
Visual: Lightly hazy pale yellow gold. Some small bubbled carbonation. Moderate sized white head.
Nose: Peach. Pineapple. Grapefruit. Booming. Understated, bitter and dry hop character. Clean and dry. Crushed granite touch.
Body: Tart grapefruit and tart pink grapefruit. Solid bitterness. Clean wet sheen. Tangerine. Soft toffee. Sour dough. Eggplant.
Finish: Hop oil sheen. Bitterness. Pink grapefruit. Tangerine. Apricot. Sour dough. Flour.
Conclusion: I feel I’ve been a tad IPA obsessed recently, I really should mix things up a bit more, hope that is not putting any readers off. Anyway, here is a another west coast style IPA! WOO WOO!
This one feels slightly, erm, wetter than most west coast IPAs I have had. Still a tad dry, but not as attenuated as some. What it does have though is an aroma that booms miles away from the glass.
Initially there is a touch of sweet peach which surprised me, but that rapidly became more familiar, tarter, grapefruit and pineapple notes. As you hit the body, and out into the finish the grapefruit seems a super fresh and tart pink grapefruit style, which I always appreciate.
The bitterness is solid but understated, with a nice touch of hop oils. Not as big as I would expect, but as I say, solid. It also does the fruitiness well, so much fruit – as it warms slightly sweeter fruit shows itself, but mainly it is a bunch of tart green fruit.
Not much beyond that to comment on – as mentioned not as attenuated as some, I prefer just a touch drier in my west coasts, but generally it is decent. Not a show stopper but decent enough.
Background: West Coast, Best Coast! Or so I often say. I am biased. Anyway a new West Coast style collaboration IPA. Little Summer Beer Bash seems to be a small beer festival Verdant runs, so I presume they got the varied breweries together and made this during or around that time. I don’t think I have encountered Stoup or Bale Breaker before, so wasn’t sure what they would bring to the table for this. Bale Breaker look like the own a hop farm, and use that to make their beer and Stoup look proper beer nerdy, so sounds like a good combo to get together. A google tells me both are USA brewers, so prob why I have not encountered, interesting set to get together. Hop wise this uses mosaic, krush and nectaron – which sounded a nice package. This was grabbed from Independent Spirit. Music wise I went with Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee. Just wanted something nice and chilled at the time to back my drinking.
