New Belgium "The Hemperor" IPA

I'm not listing this as an HPA, and I'm not creating a label for it. We all know it's a marketing term and ... holy crap. I just noticed that they actually registered that initialism. That's not particularly chill, guys. You need to smoke a bit more of that dank weed and just lay back and think about your choices.

The mostly clear beer is a faded copper color that shades towards brown. The white top is predictably sticky icky, and it leaves huge swaths of lacing down the sides of the glass like it's a hero or something. The aroma is, considering the name, exactly what you might expect: dank, wet hops. This time, the hops are pine and tropical.

First sip is certainly dank, but it's not going insane with it. It lingers quite a bit, and it is infused throughout the beer, but the doughy malt comes out to play right in the center, and the tropical fruits make it a lot more thirst quenching than anything that is really dank will do. As a result, it's not bad, but it's not mind-splitting or anything.

Tip-in is dank weed with pine and a wee bit of malt with carbonation just too blazed to give a care about any of it. The carbonation suddenly starts to care when the middle comes in with very muted tropical fruits and the dough malt under a haze of dank chill. The finish is an ease into dryness as the dank and pine trail off. As the beer starts to warm up, both the tip-in and the finish start to get a little skunked, and that does not help the beverage at all.

Bottom Line: If you're in the mood for dank, this might be a winner, but drink it quick.

2.25/5