Review #4
Brewer: Russian River Brewing Company
Beer: Pliny The Elder
ABV: 8%
Location: Santa Rosa, CA
Style: Douple IPA/Imperial IPA
OK, so currently I have a backlog of like ~16 beers that I’ve reviewed but have not gotten around to posting. Reason being, I usually make some pretty basic tasting notes that are lacking in fluidity or prawpur grammuhr, so I can just get on with relaxing and enjoying my beer. Also no one is really reading these at this time so it really doesn’t matter much as I literally have 0 demand to have to supply for, so yap. Anywho, I figured I would say to hell with the order of the beers that I reviewed as I have recently acquired something rather special, and for the sake of making some kind of temporal sense, I should probably post this one rather soon. Last week I had the pleasure of visiting San Diego which in the craft beer community is known as an IPA, and just generally a Craft Beer, Mecca. Well after getting to try this beer on several occasions while there, I had to bring a bottle back to drink at home. The beer in question is Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, and it is hyped up as being one of the best IIPA’s out there, and while it is pretty difficult to track down (it's always sold out erwhere), it is technically available year-round. Extra useless information: Its named after a badass Roman Historian/Scholar/Philosopher, and is probably the ugliest bottle I've seen... It looks like a damn olive. My particular bottle was bottled on August 9th, so for someone like me to able to taste this beer at home in Canada with just barely a week of age on it is something special. If you don’t know why I stress the fresh drinking of this beer, well the bottle has some humorous warnings and imperatives about why you shouldn’t age it, but just look it up on google ya damn kids! On with the review then: This thing pours a gorgeous amber gold and is slightly foggy. It may be its reputation influencing me (and my memory of its flavour), but it is really one of the greatest looking beers I think I have seen, but I mean, realistically it could look like Orbitz and it wouldn’t change how much I like this beer. Holy crap the aroma Is absolutely unreal. Pine, resinous hops, dank, almost cannabis-like, slight pepperiness, some light tropical fruit and citrus – super ripe peach, but not too sugary smelling. First taste is remarkably balanced. Smell made me feel as if it was going to be a palate wrecker, like really was just gonna have its way with your taste buds like an angry Eewok, but frick me if it is not the cleanest IIPA I have ever had. Tons of that tropical fruit hop, a little bit of a malty sweetness, mouthfeel is unreal and velvety. It’s definitely thicker than an IPA, less so than an Imperial Stout, but works great with the carbonation. You get so much damn hop flavour up front; it’s that tropical fruit and resiny madness, that blends perfectly with the malt and upped alcohol that everything balances out perfectly. I always figured it would be this unworldly bitter hop bomb but, they just do so much with the flavour of the hops that it becomes this wonderfully juicy beast of an IIPA. I do get a little bit of bitterness that fades in a few seconds after swallowing but its soon gone and that juicy awesome hop flavour sticks around for the long haul. At 8%, I don’t get an alcohol burn at all in the finish; however I can feel a great warmth in my throat as I breathe out. Again the mouthfeel is great and can only be described as silky or velvety. Before I ever tasted it, I really had a different Idea of what this beer would be, figuring it would be akin to like a Ruination or something, but it far surpassed those expectations and I’m glad. That’s not to say that the Ruination is worse than this, or even that Alley Kat’s Bad Hare Day is either for that matter, each is doing something totally different with the style, while remaining true to it, and the outcome in each case is truly fantastic. However I can’t deny how awesome this beer is, and how it is the epitome of a quality IIPA. Like there is no off-putting grainy-almost-mustiness, or sometimes I get this grain like flavour that’s just too overpowering in some IPA’s and their variants. I dunno, maybe it’s the different water that is being used, or just the quality of the malts, again I don’t know, but this beer definitely avoids all of that. So there you go. Go down to California right now and buy one. Or better yet go to their brewery and drink it fresh, then drink some Pliny the younger and laugh at me.
Rating: as Epic as the way the namesake died. Killed by Mount Vesuvius when it destroyed Pompeii. What the what?!
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