Wee Beefy's no longer Christmas bottled beer review

Helloo

    I actually despatched this tipple Saturday night but have been busy with stuff not to mention things so delayed this review until now. Here are the details of my latest beer tasting.

A menu of one...

A menu featuring a single item seems a bit of a shit shaped offering but sometimes you can see that you will be sate after item one and so there's no point wasting anything else.  I had already "warmed up" with a glass or two of Old Luxters Cuvee English wine (yes, you read right, and none of that dreadful fizzy dry crap neither), my last pint of Moonshine and a slightly disappointing Derby Brewing co Business as Usual, but this beer was my dessert and I hoped it would kick me hard enough to render a nightcap redundant.

Brewery : Sierra Nevada, California

Name : Torpedo Extra IPA
Strength : 7.2%
BCA/none BCA? : none BCA.
Purchased : Waitrose.

Apologies for the rather ham-fisted focus - my knackered old camera lurches to one side (bad, tools, blames, workman, etc) resulting in a rather accurate representation of how my notes from later that night appear to me now whilst sober.

Colour : Russet brown with orange in the light, topped by a light bubble packed white head.
Carbonation/Pouring : Lively but not unpourable, pouring silent down the side of the glass with the bubbles lessening through the drink. See radically different picture below, depicting the head...

 Aroma : Wow! Grapefruit, honeysuckle and orange blossom, AKA fine citric hops.

Taste : Many, many hops. Very bittersweet with a long dry aftertaste. Marmalade insists on playing a part in the flavour, more so in the second swig, but the strong bitterness doesn't leave quickly, showing itself in a sharp citrus bite that sits in the aftertaste with welcome balancing malt.

The bitterness, which gets a little sweeter as the beer warms in the glass, still fizzes on the tongue pleasingly with every mouthful. The balance of different citrus flavours and malt makes it a more rounded beer than their signature Pale Ale.


Overall, the extra alcohol, which can so often be masked in really astringent IPA's, seems prevalent in the taste so, although its less refreshing than the the 5.9% Pale Ale, the beer is all the more satisfying for being so.

Head Retention : Regimented throughout, with the head showing the same at every stage of the drink, with none sloping off for a rest on the side of the glass en route to the bottom.

WBrating : 8.6 - a really good IPA which, despite being American, which is now conversely an English "craft" brewers fancy, balances malt and hops in such a way that it reminds me of an older style English IPA like a really good Fullers or Durham Brewery offering.

Wee Beefy