Name: Imperial IPA

Brewery: Green Flash

Overall Rating: A

Style: Imperial India Pale Ale

Serving Style: 22oz Bottle

ABV: 9%

IBU: 101

Price: $6.99

Aroma: The heavy, herbal aromatics from the nugget hop are present with every deep inhalation.  The raw power of the newer variety summit hops made this the first beer I can remember smelling long before I brought the glass to my nose.  Two titans of the hop world collide in an aromatic blossom that is a true treat for the olfactory.

Appearance: Poured vigorously into my glass chalice produced a slight head.  As it settled, the liquid appear cloudy, though nothing alarming.  Deeply rich golden tones; similar to most IIPAs I’ve had.  Slight lacing was present after a few sips.  Head retention was nothing more than a few wisps of clouds floating on the surface.

Flavor: There is an heavy, earthy almost pungent hop flavor that in the cheese world you get from the blue variety.  It’s a bit hard to describe.  It’s a mighty powerful hops flavor that’s deep and complex.  This finish is dry, which is very important for this style I’ve found.  Still, there a small amount of residual sugar that gives it a balance in body.

Mouthfeel: Well carbonated, drier than most but still retains some body.  The resins from apparently existence dry hopping coat the mouth for many minutes after the previous sip.

Enjoyability: Brewmaster “Chuck”  boldly states right on the bottle above his signaure “It’s all about the hops!”.  He’s right!  Hops, hops, hops, with malts.  The Imperial IPA is a style everyone is making these days to satisfy the legions of hops heads that have been created by some of the brewing pioneers over the past decade.  Sadly, so many of these fall short these days.  Hops aren’t cheap and it takes a lot of dry hopping to make a really good IIPA.  It seems a lot of brewers cut corners by using ultra high alpha hops at the expense of complexity.   Luckily, this exceptional beer from Green Flash gives me hope for a style that I was losing interest in.  The choice of nugget and summit hops is a bold experiment that pays off.  My best guess is that Nugget was the primary boiling hop with some late additions of Summit towards the end of the boil and then a heavy dosing of Summit for dry hopping.  The body and carbonation are expetional on this beer and I think if they were off by just a bit, the foundation that the hop juice is built on would collapse.   I’d agree with Chuck that “It’s all about the hops” but his real secret is the perfect balance in this beer.

This review was  a bit long.  I guess I could sum it up with A++++++ HOPS HOPS HOPS!

Another take: The infamous Mr. Angry | Left4Beer

Tags: A-, beer review, double ipa, Green Flash, hops hops hops, IIPA

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Beer Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.