Improv Imperial Dark Rye Ale
Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Florida, United States 🇺🇸
Speciality Grain - Rye / Roggenbier Special|
Score
7.32
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What you have here is an Imperial Dark Rye Ale. Isn’t that a lot to be going on in just one beer? Well yes, it is. But that is the point. Layers. Flavor elements building on and playing off of preceding elements, like a building wave; a growing crescendum of taste bud temptation; a wall of sound expressed through flavor and channeled toward your mouth. This beer isn’t for everyone. In many ways it is more than just a little weird. It certainly doesn’t fit easily into any category. In the spirit of all great things that are conceived in the moment, but perfected through passionate repetition it started life as an improvisation and grew from there. And it might not be for you. But if the thought of big spicy rye notes, a wallop of a hop punch, multitudinous layers of caramel, sweet malt and a respectable balancing gravity sound intriguing then you might want to wing it and give Improv a try.
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8.1/10
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Appearance 8
Aroma 8
Flavor 8
Texture 8
Overall 8.5
Pours deep dark chocolate brown with tan head. The aroma is big and sweet with lots tangelo citrus sweetness from a load of late addition hopping followed close behind by muted malt notes in the background made up of chocolate, roasty malts and almost detectable rye. I get a myriad of other hoppy notes under the heavy handed citrus tangelo and orange like some floral, spice, a bit of pine and subtle grassiness. The taste is thick and near chewy with tangelo hop flavor sweetness rushing in first followed by a growing varied mix of hop bitterness starting mostly with thick citrus hops, some floral and spice. The bitterness seems to peak as the finish approaches and carries deep into the after taste. For the malt side of this there are notes of various roasted base malts, a solid rye twang that seems to bridge the gap between bitter hops and meatier malts. The overall taste experience seems a little disjointed with a load of hops and a bold mix of complex malts polarizing the experience somewhat. It seems to lack a little harmony. That’s just the sense I get. Those comments are getting a little too picky. It is a real tasty brew.
Tried
on 01 Nov 2008
at 08:35