6.1

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Draught pint at PP Carlsbad on 3/25/07
Lucid, slightly-bronzed pineapple colored body has a small, dense white head atop it and shows medium-high clarity, with moderate haziness and strong carbonation. Sticky lace is left behind as the beer recedes.
A big WHAP of hops hits the nose, somewhat juicy and with tropical fruit essences, but just intensely dry, piney and citric behind that. It’s fresh, very bold and sniffable, but the sweet caramel is held in check by the rye notes, which add some breadiness, light spice and pepper notes and the overall effect that the malt isnt really as balancing as it turns out to be in the flavor. Replete with yellow fruits (peach, nectarine, apricot, pineapple, mango), which forcefully come out upon warming, it tends to sweeten with warming as more of the base malt gradually oozes out. Light acidity/breadiness on the end, with strong grapefruit punchiness lingering, though some of the lively fruitiness lingers as well. Love the freshness and vibrancy of the hops in all of Pizza Port’s beers, but sometimes it’s just way too much, as I thought here. Alcohol is noticeable on the finish, lightly.
Before the palate can really take in any malt notes, it’s confronted by strong pine-wintergreen and fruity (but very bitter) grapefruit. Pale and light medium malt sweetness seems to flare up for a second, adding a barage of sugars that further disorients the palate, but the rye dryness (almost a vague nuttiness) calms things down a bit and provides a fairly chewy texture for some of the bitterness/sweetness to sink in to. But the hop power is never really controlled and a burning acidity, matched with some alcohol dryness/heat makes it quite punishing on the end, as you get in to the glass. Warming/breathing dosent seem to do anything for it, as the alcohol just emerges more sharply on the end, and the malt sugars get slightly syrupy. Just too raw and over-the-top, I thought, despite the fact that the individual flavors were pretty enjoyable. I actually preferred this quite chilled, and while the carbonation was still quite tight at the start of the glass. Difficult to drink much of it.