Ruckus Brewing HOPTIMUS PRIME - Double India Pale Ale (2011)Brewed and Bottle by Ruckus Brewing Co., in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA.
Year Round Beer.
22 fl. oz. / $7.49 USD / 9.0% ABV
About: "Aggressively formulated with five different hop varieties, Hoptimus Prime is then dry hopped for two weeks, ensuring a MASSIVE hop flavor and aroma. Perfectly balanced with three types of malt, Hoptimus Prime is truly the pinnacle of hop flavor. This Double IPA pairs fantastically with spicy Thai food, Mexican cuisine, or a big ol' bowl of chili."
Thoughts: This is my first beer from Ruckus. How could I pass up a beer named Hoptimus Prime!? I simply couldn't. And what timing to post this review, with tonight being the Hub's Transformers "Mega Saturday".
Prime poured a very hazy orange amber with a two finger off-white head full of tiny bubbles and a layer of froth on top. There are carbonation bubbles rising everywhere around the edges of the glass, non stop. Once the head died down it clumped in a few areas.
Smells fresh and citrusy, a little bit fruity and there's a little bit of sweet spice in there too. A low level of alcohol lingers around the back end of it all.
Bitter and hazy first off. There's a twirling of flavors in there, kinda like a peach cobbler... and once swallowed a mellow bitterness lingers. There's a bit of a caramel background. As I've been drinking quite a few more IPAs lately, I'm not exactly surprised as to how malt dominated this seems to be. There's the hints of hops everywhere of course, in the nose and mouth, but the malt is sustaining and not really dropping back. It's like a honey-oat bread type taste. The hops aren't really grassy at all, but smokey rather.
This beer is very fluffy and though not too heavy of a medium, it doesn't go down too easily because of that.
The bitterness that I'm getting at the end isn't truly bitter at all. It's very mild, like I just smoked a cigarette. My mouth is only somewhat dry, but it didn't dry me out. This is a pretty good beer. I'm not disappointed, but I'm not exactly enthralled by it either. This was an exciting experience that ended up leaving much to be desired.
I recall ordering this on tap at a craft beer bar in NYC several years ago, on the merits of it's name alone. I don't remember much about it, but do recall liking it. I've seen it in bottle form several times at the beer store, but for some reason passed it up time and time again for other beers. Glad I didn't spend the extra cash on it.
ReplyDeleteAs for Double IPAs, I recently tried Sixpoint Resin. It's a malry hop-bomb weighing in at 9.1% ABV. Sixpoint is a hip Brooklyn brewery, so they can their beer, but don't let that throw you off. They're a solid brewery. Check it out if you come across it up there.