pelliott wrote:Andrew wrote:As someone who won't ever be able to try Heady/Pliney/Any other wanky DIPA. Are they that good? Or would I still get the same fix from having a fresh Brew?
I went to college in Vermont and so I will always be a homer for those beers, but they are phenomenal. I don't know what Aussie's beer scene is like, to be honest, but a great, fresh IPA will always blow me away. It's probably not worth it to have someone ship a volatile beer like that across the ocean if you have really good, and FRESH beer available to you now, but if you ever come to the US, hitting up some brewpubs is totally worth it.
Fresh Heady is unreal, I will say. Pretty much every great beer is overhyped and arguably overrated to some extent, because people like what they like (a lot of people on the beeradvocate and ratebeer like either SUPER HOPPY or SUPER SWEET or CRRRAZZZZY SOUR, and then momentum takes over when a beer starts getting high ratings, sometimes due to rarity/trade value), but it IS probably my favorite beer, because the combination of dank, fresh nose with the citrus and tropical flavor is pretty much my dream IPA. For an 8% DIPA it's amazingly light, drinkable, and not bitter, per se, but still that satisfying resinous sensation, but it's more tangerine-flavored than straight tongue-punishing bitterness.
Second Fiddle is creeping up on it, though. First time I've had SF fresh, and that beer is incredible. It's super dank, too, but then it tastes like papaya and melon.
VT is producing these crazy good IPAs (it's something in the water. no, really) that every time I have one it is undeniably head and shoulders better than 99% of the competition, but almost everywhere you go in the US now, there's a readily available, fresh, delicious IPA that you don't need to go crazy trying to track down the best of the best stuff, really.
I think that I ranted in the past about being kind of underwhelmed by DFH 90 Minute, just because it's been talked up so much. It's still a great beer, but Santo Palo is absolutely Dogfish's best year-round Brew. I think that my go-to Craft Beer store has gotten better with fresher US beers so I'm kind of confident with my own tastes. I'm pretty used to New Zealand craft which makes some pretty out there stuff and produces their own Hops. Australia is still slowly improving, there's some good stuff out there but it's just expensive. High Tax for everyone.
On a related note, I just bought myself a case of Sixpoint Resin. Hop Juice.