Abomination "Hop Thing" New England IPA

They call this Hop Thing, and they're clearly pantomiming Swamp Thing with the label. Am I to be in the mind of a swamp for this beer? Does it have something to do with a swamp? Did they just find something that kind of rhymed with hop and said that they could probably make a go with it? These are the kind of questions that I have, and I would only really ask them if I was sitting down and drinking beer with them. Instead, I will ignore the questions and start drinking some beer.

The beer pours a somewhat hazy yellow gold. The quite voluminous and sumptuous head takes a while to go down so that I can pour a little more in for the picture that you see here. It's not leaving a whole lot of lacing, but you can tell that there used to be bubbles there, and I guess that counts for something. The aroma is delightfully citrus heavy, and it appears to have some tropical fruits backing it up. Honestly, it smells absolutely delightful.

First sip is definitely nowhere near what I expected. This thing has a little sour on top of tart on top of bitter with dryness and a hollow void in tow. The first sip is not a winner. In fact, I might actively dislike this beer right now. This is why have a process. I can't just willy-nilly decide that I'm going to dislike a beer based on a single sip. What kind of madness would that lead us to? Instead, we gulp.

Tip-in is bitter tartness with grains and a low-level of citrus; carbonation isn't doing much. The middle actually mellows out quite a bit, and the citrus and tropical fruits are allowed to mix with the grains in a basket of thin bitterness and tartness. The finish is where the bitter hammer comes down followed by tart that has that little bit of sour following before going straight to dryness and the hollow feeling that some better beer could have been had on this night.

Bottom Line: I'm not going to pour this down the drain, but I'm also not going to get another one.

1.5/5