12 oz single from Hop City, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Heard various descriptions of this, including “Black Pale Ale” (which I cannot abide) so I was interested (and anxious) to see what this looked like before anything else.
The beer pours with a deep, granet, reddish hue with great clarity. Nice head and lace considering the ABV, it looks good in the glass.
Semi-sweet nose with some sinus clearing, tea-like hops.
Tastes are obviously hop-forward and quite dry, but there is a degree of balanced sweetness which helps level it out a bit. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a mightyly UNbalanced beer, but the malts are at least present to help it along a bit. The finish seems VERY, VERY green and raw. The green nature of the flavor is the linger feature.
As far as the mouthfeel goes, the beer is relatively thin and lacks much viscosity.
A poor man’s Arrogant Bastard? Not as sweet or as smooth, but reminds me of it a little, especially the apperance.
Not really my cup of tea and not really very approachable, but at the same time it wasn’t as bad as it could have been – that’s about the best I can say.