12 oz single from Hop City, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Meh, when beer gets like this for me it essentially ceases to become beer and turns into an experience that is simply too much like hard work. You have to really work at this beer to appreciate it and drink it, and for me that begins to detract from the point of “having a beer”.
It’s a VERY high octane product no matter how one looks at it, and a beer like this could ONLY be brewed in America, or least by a brewer with a colossal American influence.
Pour is an attractive, reddish brown highlighted black, with a decent mocha head and a little lace and retention. The head has a coffee color to it.
The initial aromas are really quite sweet, and offer a boozy malt bomb that put s one in mind of an English Barleywine. When one considers the appearance and nose, all is well. The tastes are a different matter though.
What starts off as a reflection on the nose (sugary sweetness, lots of malts and plenty of booze), about half way through a vicious bitterness, led by unrelenting citrus and pine-needle base based hops, cuts right across the palate. It ends up being a puckeringly dry, charcoal based nastiness that coats the tongue and not in a good way. Some wood, some drying sawdust and a everlasting bitterness that dries the tongue and palate for scores of minutes after the beer is finished. Alcohol arrives in a loud shirt and wears its sunglasses indoors. Hot and unsophisticated in the extreme.
Rough around he edges, this beer screams aggression and frankly has all the hallmarks of beer that is trying to be a noisy, brash, uninvited party goer without much class.
Horrible finish and aftertaste, takes the beer from a smooth start to an almost unrecognizable ending. Impossible to drink more than maybe 18-10 of the 12 oz, this beer also represents absolutely APPALLING value. All that’s bad about contemporary, American craft beer.