Green Flash - Palate Wrecker

When you see a beer emblazoned with such an appellation, it really demands that you pick it up.  I mean, c'mon... Palate Wrecker?  It jabs your curiosity with a red hot poker and challenges you at the same time.  I know exactly what this beer is made to do and when you're in the mood for that hoppy, bitter, sticky goodness, nothing else will do.  There's no IBUs listed on the label, but it states a 9.5% ABV.  Good, I never really liked my liver anyway.  I'm ready to crack this open, I just hope it doesn't crack back.  Let's pour!

Aroma 11/12

Starting off, this beer leaves no hop scent unturned.  It begins with a strong grassy smell, adds resin, grapefruit, pine, and dabbles with some oranges.  The malts come through as hay-like with a touch of mustiness, but also offer a distant bit of brown sugar which has to shout to be heard through the citrusy hops.  Once the beer settles a bit, the hops fall into a pine & citrus partnership, with a bit of herbal tickle that keeps us mindful of the hop plant's relations in the Hemp family (cannabaceae, pronounced can-uh-BAY-shee-ay).  The citrus comes across as so sweet and fragrant that it borders of floral.  Very nice.

Appearance 3/3

As expected this beer showed great head, lacing, and retention.  The sticky head was a slightly yellowed ivory color and covered the surface well after the pour.  The color is more copper and amber than I expected.  Well, I guess most IPAs are copper and/or amber, but this appears more red when just sitting in the glass.

Flavor 17/20

I was about to take the first sip of this beer and I began to wonder as I raised the glass to my mouth, "Will this be a really sweet opening to this beer to balance the malt or just rush right in with bitter?"  Answer:  It SLAMMED me with bitter.  I take that back, there's a light sugary citrus note that floats for just a moment before being comically crushed with an anvil.  Despite this barely exaggerated description, there really is more to this beer but you've gotta pay pretty close attention to find it behind the "These-go-to-eleven" level of hops.  After the bitter explosion, if you hold the beer in the mouth, you'll get quite an intense resin flavor mixed with a pseudo-balancing citrus sweetness, honey, and some sugary, caramel malts.  Not only does holding the beer in the mouth help find these flavors, but so does acclimating your palate to the bitterness.  Halfway through the bottle, these flavors become much easier to detect.  Good heavens is this beer bitter!  The finish is, you guessed it, ridiculously bitter.  However, a quicker swig lets the caramel malts help fend off most of the bitterness.  The beer is sticky in the back of the throat and makes saliva difficult to swallow.

Mouthfeel 4/5

Adequate carbonation in the beginning, but toward the end of the bottle the carbonation has abandoned ship which does not help to finish off this monster beer.  The alcohol warmth is invisible behind the hops and the body is just as heavy as the sticky head and remnants in the back of the throat would have you believe.  Normally, I'd say the minimal level of carbonation is perfect, but in a beer this strong and heavy I could really use a few extra bubbles.  There is nothing small about the mouthfeel of this beer.

Overall Impression 8/10

For what it is, it's a kick ass beer.  No really.  It might just kick your ass.  Large aroma, gargantuan flavors, and a car crushing mouthfeel all make this not a beer to be taken lightly.  True to it's name, it is a palate wrecker.  Those looking for balance or nuance look elsewhere.  You'll not find it here.  If you've got a hankering for hops... this. is. it.  

Total 43/50

Well, I was looking for hops when I bought this and boy did I find them.  This beer absolutely walloped me in the mouth and did not apologize afterwards.  It then kicked my cat and pinched a baby.  I'm not sure where it got the baby because I don't even have kids.  Palate Wrecker is an insanely accurate name and description for this beer.  This is both good and bad.  It's good because it doesn't leave you wondering if the brewer meant to make a more nuanced, balanced DIPA/IIPA.  He/she did not.  They made this beer to destroy you.  It's bad because FAR more often than not, I want to drink a beer with balance.  This beer sacrifices drinkability, balance, nuance, and complexity all in the name of what your tongue can endure.

This is not a beer I could drink every day.  It is, without question, a special occasion beer.  It's the beer you keep on hand to see how many IBUs your craft beer buddies can take or when you're REALLY in the mood for something hoppy.  However, it never claims to be anything but.  It says Palate Wrecker right on the friggin' label.  What did you think you were getting?  Due to its honesty and implying the brewers' intentions, I cannot rate it lower.  This beer is exactly what it wants to be.  No apologies.

Founders - Double Trouble

I have no idea how I've not reviewed this beer yet.  I like to review these big IPAs as soon as possible while they are fresh and closest to how the brewer intended them.  I got through some of the big boys, but this one has somehow eluded me.  It's another big DIPA from Michigan (Hopslam from Bell's being the other that I've reviewed) and it is often paired against its interstate "rival."  Heck, a local bar in the Quad Cities had an event for just such a purpose!  Check out the awesome graphic below.

Pretty sure this image is the property of RIBCO.

On a note entirely separate I FOUND MY DIGITAL CAMERA!  No longer will my shots be imbued with a pinkish hue.  I giggled like a school girl when I found it.  Not only will I be able to take higher quality shots for the blog again, but I found it just in time for beer fest season!  Now you can be inundated with all sorts of high quality digital images (I know you're excited)! Enough with the ramblin'.  Let's pour!

Aroma 11/12

You can easily smell this brew before ever pouring a drop!  It starts of sweet with mandarin oranges and pine, but quickly goes through many permutations.  The first being a bit more tropical with bits of mango, lemon zest, and a hint of warmth.  Next some faint caramel and toasty malts appear.  It settles into what at first seems like a lemony note, but the tropical theme hasn't had it final say yet!  It turns into a sugary pineapple with a classic grassy hop behind it.  Absolutely beautiful, even if it's not much balance.

Appearance 3/3
Extremely high clarity for an IIPA, but it still manages to show a moderate range of gold and honey tones.  A nice column of carbonation ever-ascends to the top and helps keep the aroma strong  The head is fair in size, a light orange pastel in color, and appears wet and creamy upon settling.  Oops, there was a splash left in the bottom of this bottle that managed to put a nice haze into it and remove some of that surprising clarity.

Flavor 17/20
Bitter, bitter, and more bitter.  First things first, this beer was bottled on 01/06/2012, so it's not even two months old.  I can't assume hop characteristics would fade a ton in that amount of time, but I am allowing for some flavor decay.  This beer begins with a dainty lemon zing before delving into the more brawling flavors.  The caramel comes next, which adds a nice, mellow roundness to the whole works and helps the bitterness seem slightly less aggressive than a mother wolverine with a kidney stone.  The bitterness in this in intense and dominates the flavor profile. Grapefruit is not hard to find behind this bitter (big surprise), but other flavors must nearly be sought out in order to be detected.  As mentioned, caramel, bitter and grapefruit come forward rather easily, but the notes of pineapple (or any of the other fruits for that matter) are all but imagined.  As I mentioned in the "Appearance" section, there was a splash left in this bottle when I began tasting it.  I cannot state how important it was to pour in that last splash of beer.  It completely changed the clarity and the flavor.  Before that splash, this beer tasted bitter with little else at all!  Adding that last splash, gave a somewhat balancing caramel and strengthened the citrus.  The finish on this is a continuation of the grapefruit and the bitter, which leads into a dry aftertaste.

Mouthfeel 5/5
I can't believe that this is 9.4% ABV!  I never would have guessed.  The body is medium-full and very pleasantly smooth from all the caramel malts.  The carbonation is ample, but nearly absent toward the end of the bottle and teeters on becoming non-existant save for a quick swish in the mouth.  The beer also posseses a light creaminess not typically found in IIPAs or DIPAs.

Overall Impression 8/10
Lots to love here if you love hops.  It's a well-crafted beer in many areas, including: body, appearance, head, and hidden warmth.  Its smell was more complex than the taste (far from a sin), but the flavor seemed a bit content to overpower its drinker with hop bitter instead of hop flavor.  If you love a bitter beer, this is a match made in heaven!  If you're looking for a bit more balance or to see what hops can TRULY offer a beer, then this beer will still be tasty, but perhaps not your ideal IIPA.  I enjoyed this beer, it is far from being bad or lacking in flavor.  However, to only focus on the bitter of the hop, sells that plant short as it is capable of so much more.


Total 44/50
This score places it at the tip top of the "Excellent" category and rightly so.  It's very well made, laden with flavor, and has not only camouflaged its alcohol warmth, but also apparently wrapped it in stealth technology.  This is a hop lover's DREAM.  If you love hops and you love bitter, then look no further.  However, as I mentioned earlier, I believe that hops are capable of so much more than simply landing vicious right hooks to my tongue.  They can be sweet, tropical, spicy, herbal, piney, woody, and floral (amongst others).  Why not utilize those capabilities?  I certainly know that Founders is capable!  I also know that while some of those characteristics would not have jived with the beer they were trying to make, some of them would have and we wouldn't have been any worse off for it.  I'll certainly buy this again next year when it comes around, but I'll be buying for the bitter and not for the balance.  In finishing, I'd like to give Founders props for making a behemoth beer and calling it an IIPA, when it seems all too easy to call a beer an "Imperial" and then try to get away with something less than.  Good work, Founders.  This certainly qualifies.