Meet Me In Montauk
Tall Poppy Brewing Company in Kontich, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Pale Ale - American Style / APA Regular Out of Production|
Score
6.81
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Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
An APA of sorts by Tall Poppy, dry-hopped with - among others - Mandarina Bavaria, Germany's 21st-century answer to the wave of New World hops modern IPA and APA surf on. Bottle from Kevin Devos' BeerShop in Kontich, lot 2018/0014 apparently. Thick, yellowish egg-white, dense and creamy, slowly dissipating head on a cloudy deep peach blonde beer with ochre hue, almost vaguely brownish-tinged, milky with sediment - not even looking like a typical 'juicy' or 'hazy' APA / IPA should look like, but more like an amateur brew made in someone's kitchen. Anyway, pleasant aroma in spite of the less attractive looks, with impressions of blood orange, pink grapefruit, fresh basil, sweet cicely, freshly grated soapy ginger root, sundried tomatoes, soggy old biscuit, overripe mango, bread crumbs. Fruity onset, not just from hops and malts as it ought to be in the intended style, but from yeasty esters as well, hinting at peach, ripe pear, mango, orange and pineapple alike, medium carbonated with a soft, fluffy mouthfeel. Sweetbready, slightly biscuity malt sweetish body with a thin nutty edge, soaked in full, long, rooty, resinous hop bitterness of a very grapefruity nature, somewhat piney too, very spicy and tonic water-like - quite the opposite of what I was expecting based on looks and aroma, to be honest, but pleasant enough, of a long-lasting, tongue-scraping bitterness reminiscent of old school West Coast traditions. Bready yeastiness is there too, but not clashing with this hoppiness, at least I personally am not bothered by it - if anything, it seems to soften the hop bitterness a bit. Too yeasty for what they intended, in all, even with that milky look in the end, but very aromatic as well as very uncompromisingly bitter, and in that sense much more IPA than APA. Mandarina Bavaria really saves the day here.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
330 ml. bottle. Bottled 05/10/2018. Ugly hazy orange, visible lively carbonation, creamy low off-white head. Nose is sweeter malty pine resin but mellowed out, mothballs bitter & some hay with dash of cane sugar malty. High carbonation. Messy bitter pine, chewy malt, bubble-gum, hay, pine resin, lingering harsh medicinal finish, quinine, low chalk,… Malty but bit thinner body, chewy, bitter medicinal pine. Real throwback in style like a messy IPA from the hop wars era lingering back to old school West Coast IPA. No one really makes beer like this anymore in general. Not necessarily bad in that aspect but it is too harsh with some stale yeast flavour & bit hard to drink, interesting but bit all over the place and out of touch in a way. Largely fun but also bit too hard to drink to fully love.