You know that line that exists between almost too far and definitely too far? You see it often in Hong Kong science fiction films and sometimes encounter it in Rucka Rucka Ali videos all the time. You know the line. It’s mostly invisible but by the time you’re approaching it you already know you’ve gone further than you might ought to normally, depending of course on what normal means.
That is pretty much what this beer is. There are IPAs, double IPAs, Imperial IPAs and even Triple IPAs – all offering varying degrees of dankness, flavor, intensity, booze, hop and even malt. But this is something else.
I could compare this to Hardcore Chimera, one of my favorite imperials. But I cannot help but feel a more apt comparison would be to Founder’s Devil Dancer, a big and beastly 12% triple. However even then I feel I may be missing the mark, at least in terms of my critique.
This beer is brown. Sure, technically it’s a dark copper or amber color, but what other word for that is there other than brown. This is brown beer. A brown, hoppy, aggressive heavy hitting beer.
Loaded with six pounds of hops per barrel, which blows Hardcore Chimera’s three pounds well out of the water, this is one of the most aggressively hop-forward beers I’ve encountered. While some IPAs may smell like lawn clippings thanks to their hop profiles, this one smells like bark mulch. It smells like the grounds of the playground that it will bully and beat you up on.
It presents all in all, even before a sip, like the feeling of pouring a full glass of rye whiskey when you’d only intended on pouring a double shot. You have too much. You know you do. But you’re not putting the genie (or the drink) back in the bottle. So what to make of this from the palate perspective?
Well, it is called Palate Wrecker for a very good reason. In more than one sense this could almost be regarded as an anti-session IPA. Whereas sessions are 4% or below, this is 9.5% and while sessions are light enough to where if you wanted to enjoy a different kind of beer after, this dank monster is big and bad enough to where you’ll be lucky if you taste anything the following morning, when you wake up at your desk, drool spilling into your cheap Walmart keyboard, wondering what happened to your column. It earned its name.
As stated, it is dank. Possibly one of the dankest IPAs I’ve ever had. Not merely content to berate your palate with ordinary hop notes of pine, resin, citrus or grass, this beast transcends hoppy beer becoming a boozy, malty beer which the uninitiated might in good faith mistake for a slightly hopped barleywine. Looking at it in the glass, I’m tempted to make that judgment even now.
It is not for the faint of heart, but at the same time not something to avoid if you enjoy a richly hopped, well crafted beast of an IPA. Green Flash never ceases to impress. Well done.
So to Green Flash, to whatever madman created this palate wrecking, liver solidifying titan and of course to you, I say as always…
Cheers!
While the brewery may have provided the product mentioned above for free, I was not required to write a positive review, I did not receive any monetary compensation, and the honest opinions I have expressed are my own.
Nicholas Goroff is an actor, writer and craft beer reviewer at EveryJoe.com. Certified as a Cicerone beer server, he is working towards obtaining certification as a beer judge while employed at Bert’s Better Beers in Hooksett, NH. When not reviewing beer, wine and spirits, he is typically writing political essays, screenplays and short fiction. Follow him on Twitter @wizardofcause.
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