REVIEW 99: HOPFISH IPA

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  USA

BREWERY:  Flying Fish Brewing Company

STYLE:  IPA

ABV:  6.2%

PURCHASE:  Six-pack of 12-oz. bottles, $11.99

SERVING:  12-oz. bottle, poured into pint glass. Three full inches of suds sat atop this beer after a pour of typical speed. A slower pour didn't yield much less. Outstanding retention.

APPEARANCE:  Transparent, but slightly hazy, copper-colored body with your standard slightly off-white tinted head. Steady bubbling and excellent lacing around the glass.

BOUQUET:  This is a good representative of the English, as opposed to the American, style of IPA, in that it isn't all about the hops. From an aromatic perspective, it's very well balanced with a significant, but modest, malt quotient. Floral overtones are noticeable, and it's a tad fruity, albeit not citrusy like a lot of stateside IPAs.

PALATE:  Very easygoing. Goes down effortlessly. (Yes, I said that with tongue ever so firmly planted in cheek.) Sweet, hoppy entry. Though citrus factors weren't really discernible in the aroma, they were in the palate, albeit only briefly (mid-palate). Maltier finish than most IPAs I've had. This is also one of those IPAs where the hops don't really crescendo; they don't waver much, except perhaps in the far aftertaste, which is also characterized by what I call an "artificial sweetener quality"--and this is where this beer goes wrong, in my opinion.

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  Bar Rescue's Jon Taffer, in an interview just a few months ago, famously (or infamously) declared that "about 60% of craft beer basically sucks." Crockett counters that "about 60% of craft beer is basically average." Why is that? Well, when you have an explosion in a particular field--in this case, microbreweries--you're inevitably going to wind up with a few elite practitioners. But you're also going to inevitably wind up with a seemingly endless mass of run-of-the-mill entrants, those who fulfill the requirements and specifications of the trade, but not in an eye-popping or award-worthy manner. 

Flying Fish is one such microbrewery. That said, this is one of their better efforts.




GRADE:  B