Beer: Moylan's Hopsickle Imperial IPA
Brewery Location: Novato, CA
Beer Style: DIPA/Imperial IPA
ABV: 9.2%
I am still on my kick of California IPAs and DIPAs, and this is a beer I had plans of getting on my last trip to Chicago, but Binny's was out of it when I was there, and I ended up trading for it. This brand is available in Chicago, and I am not sure about the rest of Illinois. I've had this beer before, but it was just before I really got into craft beer and it wasn't up my alley at the time, and it is nice to revisit some things now that I didn't like before I really stared with craft beer.
This beer pours an amber hue with three fingers worth of head on it. It left great lacing on my pint glass. The nose is pretty potent on this beer with the the hop cone being the sole focus. There is plenty of citrus fruit, grapefruit peel, earthiness, and sticky pine as well. I am not getting much in the nose in the way of malt though. My first sips of this beer is a fairly intense rush of bitterness followed by a slight bit of syrupy sweetness as well. The hop bitterness is hard to pin down and is all over the place. I get quite a bit of oily hops, citrus fruit, tobacco, pink grapefruit, and lots of sweet caramel trying to balance the flavors out. This beer is just all over the place, and after about eight ounces really became too much for me. I couldn't really pin down any of the flavors and the malt sweetness was completely separate from the over the top hop bitterness. The mouthfeel was slick and oily that was medium bodied with the alcohol quite present. The drinkability is only good for me for about six ounces of this beer, and after that fell off quite quickly.
I think of myself as a hop-head, but this beer was a big miss for me. The flavor profile doesn't do a good job of combining the many flavors coming from the hops, and the malt sweetness doesn't meld together at all with the hop profile. This beer rates pretty well on the beer websites, but I personally didn't enjoy this one.
Cheers!
Matt
1 comment:
I have had this in my hands a half a dozen times and put it away every time for no real reason. I don't think I liked the label or something haha. I'm glad I didn't after your review since your palete is a lot more refined than mine.
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