Nathalius Single Hop Galaxy IIPA

Nice bottle art. Poursgold. Cloudy. Big white head. Strong hop nose. Citrus. Pine resin.

Bottled (backlog). Golden colour with a small white head. Aroma is grass, some floral and mild herbal notes with some slight bready notes. Flavour is bready, grassy, some floral and mild herbal notes. Very simplistic, but hides the abv rather well.

330 ml bottle, from Vinmonopolet. BB date 30.04.15. ABV is 8%. Brewed by Omnipollo at De Proef Brouwerij. "Single Hop Galaxy" is not mentioned on the label. Slightly hazy deep golden to orange colour, large to moderate white head. Aroma of citrussy and piney hops. Fresh and fruity flavour first, seems to have kept well. The finish is drier, resinous and "dusty", very bitter.

Poured from 33cl bottle. Slightly cloudy orangey yellow with full white head. Aroma has an odd mix of sweet citrus, corn, and musk. Taste is dominated by bitter grapefruit with some mild sweet grain malt. Flavours don’t really meld and compliment each other.

Straw golden colour, hazy, with a nice head, not much lacing. Smells citrusy and resinous. The taste is lacking on hop flavors (though I do have a 6 months old bottle) and is very bitter.

IIPA brewed with corn and rice - two grain species which usually elicit at least a sense of suspicion among craft beer lovers, in being associated with cheap pale lagers. Moussy, fairly dense, egg-white head, colour is a warm peach blonde with orangey hue, ’defaced’ by thick ochre clouds of yeast suspended in the glass even after careful pouring; a cloudy appearance right from the start is rarely a good sign. Weird and, frankly, not too inviting aroma of indeed C-hops (pink grapefruit, lime juice and mandarin) but also the famed ’wet dog’ as well as rotten Camembert, ureum even. Apart from those two dominant odours, I get hints of kiwi, gin & tonic, wet hay, cooked rice, dust, dried reed, chicken broth, raw potato and baker’s yeast - corn is in there somewhere, but not quite as noticeable as in a pale lager made with the stuff. Fruity, crisp onset, restrainedly sweetish-sourish, with hints of mango, gooseberry, unripe stonefruit surrounded by a green olive-like umami flavour as well as a certain degree of saltiness; medium carbo, supple mouthfeel, lean pale malt sweetishness, a little bit bready, but primarily grainy with indeed a ’dull’ sourishness of rice and an equally ’dull’ sweetishness of corn but as in the aroma, the rice is clearly more noticeable than the corn. Hoppiness is present from the start and builds a bridge to the finish over this grainy profile, unleashing a deep, resinous, spicy, somewhat piney, peppery bitterness which remains coated to mouth and throat for a long time. The bitterness is deep and powerful enough to stop almost all malt sweetness so the eventual result after swallowing is bone and bone dry; a glow of gin-like alcohol is there as well. I had many excellent IIPAs and DIPAs (what’s the difference anyway) but most of these were excellent because they showed a good balance between full, sweet maltiness on the one hand and an ’abrasive’, rich hop bitterness on the other hand. This, to me, lacks malt sweetness (probably because there is too much emphasis on the rice and corn), coming across as a bit harsh and one-sided even more so than would usually be the case in this style. The aroma then lacks tropical fruitiness and breathes an unpleasant urine-like smell, which is not too inviting, to say the least. A bit of a failure for me, in comparison with the better examples of this substyle I had so far.

Turbia amarillenta oscura, con espuma bastante cremosa de buena retención. Lupulos americanos en el aroma. Frutal, pino. Notas de malta también. El sabor sigue al aroma. Inicialmente cítrica y seca seguida de gran amargor. Muy amarga y terrosa al final, bastante desbalanceada hacia el lúpulo.