The 3 Floyds ride continues. And this time there is an Irish red ale that even gives a brief story of the man that it is named after. Is the story true? Are these guys from Munster, Indiana actually Irish? Does it really matter if they are? I don't think so. What matters is the taste of this Irish beer. Well, American beer that has been made in the style of an Irish beer. Red ales are kind of a slippery lot for me, so it will be interesting to find out what new and more inventive ways 3 Floyds has managed to interpret the style.
I'd say the color is more amber than it is red, and it is quite hazy to its core. The head doesn't really come out to play very quickly, and a more aggressive pour results in the head you see before you. This head sticks around well enough with a thin cap across the top and the thick ring around the sides and scattered patches of bigger bubbles. The aroma is sweet malt underneath a seeming cornucopia of hops.First sip is robust. The pine, orange peel, earth, bitterness, and lemongrass slam hard into the toffee malt and overpower it thoroughly. As far as I can tell, sipping this is challenging. I could not happily sip this for the rest of the night. I'm not even sure I'd make it through this one bottle. The taste is to forward and unrestrained. It has no balance or refinement. But, maybe that's just a sip.
Tip-in is relatively sweet caramel and toffee malt with light carbonation and a slight bitterness from the hops that are mostly pine and orange peel. The middle is nothing like the sip other than the contribution of flavors; but now those flavors are in very nice harmony with each other and allow the malt to do its job of keeping the bitterness at bay. The finish becomes more dry than it is bitter as the pine seems to hold on a little longer than the other kinds of hops and the malt turns to grains for bittersweet trail off.
Bottom Line: Certainly an interesting take on the style. Probably not my go to.
3.0/5