Beer – #102 – Tuatara – Double Trouble APA
This is from the Tuatara Brewing Company in the style of an Imperial/Double IPA And that do this all the way south in sunny Paraparaumu, New Zealand
Calling Double Trouble a “hop showcase” might imply that this brutal 167 IBU monster has your best interests at heart. If your answer to the question, “How much hopping would you like?” is simply “more”, this is what you wish for. The malt base and Chico yeast together construct the perfect platform for the multiple additions of so many hop varieties no mere beer label could label them all. Your overwhelmed taste buds will know the feeling.
So here’s a list of what I think I’m getting: Bitter. Bitter. 167 IBU us on the high side, roughly speaking, beers with IBUs of less than 20 have little to no apparent hops presence. Beers with IBUs from 20 to 45 are the most common and have mild to pronounced hops presence. Beers with IBUs greater than 45 are heavily hopped and can be quite bitter. 167 puts this at the top end of the top http://www.beertutor.com/beers/index.php?t=highest_ibu. So not scientific in the sense that the brewer declares a value, but even so, this is going to be something.
Hopped With: Pacific Jade to bitter (70 IBU up front), then Pacific Jade, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, and Zythos late in the boil for Flavour and aroma. Then Nelson Sauvin for the first dry-hop, and Simcoe and Zythos for the second dry-hop. Calculated at 167 IBU.
Also it’s 650ml (pint and a top up) of a 9% ABV Beer, that’s about 4.6 standard drinks, so I’m either going to get frowning or in a nice place smiling, the IBU question may fade to grey.
And surprise you can smell the hops and the bitterness they promise in spades. The beer is pale golden beer colour and a decent off orange head. A win! Very grassy on the nose, nice carbonation, and again, this time without the sarcasm, a fairly muted bitterness received, compared to what I expected. I’m getting a citrus tone in this as well, I could be making it up to impress you I know what I’m tasting of course, but I spy grapefruit.
This is nice on the tongue too, decent length and a nice after. I might put the 3-d glasses on and have a gander at the label. Which is in 3D :-), back at the beer, and I’m enjoying the bittery, but I’m also now getting orangey.
It’s a thing alright. Very tidy and not at all a challenge, mainly because this time I came prepared with an expectation that matched the label and not what I thought in my head might happen.
This is not a cheap beer, but for this I’m not sitting here thinking that it was money not well spent, I’d hate to think of the price in bars if I pad around $13.00 for this. bearing in mind that this is the equivalent of, say, 2 Heineken beers, by volume, which would be a bout 2.6 units of beer, than in a unit of beer per ml this is easily great value for money.
the pdubyah-o-meter loves this 9.25 worth of love. BUT I couldn’t in all honesty sit down and have a another, this is “beer for the evening” not “the beer for all evening” it’s would make you a dull boy in the morning. It’s very cleverly delivered as a strong beer with a lot of bitterness that manages to hide both the extreme bitterness and the alcohol content, and that’s very cunning.
I’m not going to gush and offer you a refund if you buy and don’t like, you know that this is bitter, you know that this is strong, it’s not a sweet beer, it’s immaculately balanced and something to behold, you should be satisfied if you like those things and you’ll need no encouragement.
A life just as ordinary 