HOPS RUN RIOT IN PORT CITY’S MANIACAL DOUBLE IPA
Maniacal IPA, Port City, Alexandria, Va. Double India Pale Ale Abv 8.5 IBUs 85
We tasted our first Double or Imperial IPA in 2000 in California. We found two or three more each year through 2003, then in 2004 the style seemed to really catch on and we found between two and four dozen each year until 2014 when that number approached 100 a year. It shows few signs of slowing down; we’re well over a couple of dozen already this year.
Double IPAs are … what the brewer says they are. There’s a fine line between a double IPA and a hoppy barely wine and, really, a finer line between a strong, but not unusual American IPA and a double IPA. Of the 600 or so we’ve tasted, a very small handful had perceptible, but understated hops. The overwhelming majority had hop levels high enough to have an impact on your ability to “drive or operate machinery.”
Double IPAs are probably the easiest beers to make – not the cheapest, but really hard to mess up. Massive hops retard infections and cover all kinds of temperature issues and other mistakes. That said, really good double IPAs, like Port City’s Maniacal, are as challenging as most other ale styles. The beer doesn’t have to be “balanced” in flavor—a hop forward taste is expected– but it isn’t easy to make any excess in brewing taste good without some sort of balance between the body and the bitterness. Head brewer Jonathan Reeves has been in the business a long time and if he’s made a mistake lately, we haven’t tasted it. He uses a neat trick for making even strong beers palatable – balancing abv and IBU – in this case 8.5 abv and 85 IBUs. Many Double IPAs have hops that far exceed the body and while they can be excellent textbooks for learning the flavor of the dominant hop, they’re also usually “one and done” for most beer drinkers. The brewery is proud of its patented “Hopzooka”, a device for adding hops to fermenting beer without injecting oxygen as well. We think that may help in creating this very hoppy, but fundamentally tasty beer.
Tasting notes: A chewy pale malt takes a bow before the hops run riot and chase it off the stage. The malt returns to peek through the curtains at times, but the hops never quit frolicking. Hops provide plenty of sweet citrus with notes of grapefruit and blood orange, but it all hangs together quite well by the time a long huge bitter kicks in during the aftertaste. Ellie doesn’t always rate double IPAs very highly, but she really liked the meld of hop, malt and booze on this one.
Food Pairings: Randy Mosher, of the Brewers’ Association, argues for smoked brisket or grilled lamb, although we think the lamb would be overwhelmed by the ale’s intense flavors. An Iberico ham, or, if you haven’t won a lottery lately, a good salty Virginia ham is a good flavor pair. Our only reservation is that the salt makes you want to drink more than you should of the beer. There’s no doubt, though, that a very strong flavored cheese or even a good sharp cheddar would smooth the rougher edges of the hops even while the big bodied beer softens the edge of the cheese. Beer Review # 0102 20170411
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