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They're very few times I will start off review by asking what the hell the brewery was thinking when they put this thing together, but guess where I'm going to start today. A cold IPA is something that I have come to understand is a thing, and I certainly understand what a lager is. This says on the can that it is a cold IPA lager. IPA, of course, stands for India pale ale. Ales and lagers are the two main and distinctly different types of beer. Saying that something is both an ale and a lager is to say that you have, potentially, added two different kinds of yeast, and they are fermenting differently in the same batch. I don't know that I have ever heard of this happening before. I don't know that it can happen. This shouldn't be marketed as a cold IPA but as a strange new Frankenstein mix of things that have never gone together before and probably shouldn't.
The yellow beer turns very pale at the thin points in my glass, and it produces quite a bit of head, but that head leaves very little lacing as it goes down to an uneven yet complete layer of bubbles across the top of the beer. The aroma, at first, seemed to be a bit skunky from a distance. Sticking my nose in it, I can still smell a little bit of skunk, but yeast and somewhat unpleasant and unbalanced spices are what is really conveying most of the scent. They're very few times that I wished that a beer would have a bit more explanation of what the brewery was thinking or what the goal of the particular beer was on the side of the can, but this is one. I want to know what their goal was.
First sip is not terrible, but it's also not terribly pleasant. Coriander seems to have melded in with the yeast, and they have listed a couple of different kinds of hops, and one of them is Bavaria. I suppose I can see, or rather taste, that there might be some influence of a Belgian ale in this, but I would never claim that this was a close relative. The nature of the cold IPA kind of reminds me of not particularly good American macro lagers that rely entirely on coldness as a flavor to cover up the flavor that already, unfortunately, exists.
Tip-in is spiky nastiness from an unbalanced yeast and hop combo that doesn't feature the highly desirable tropical and citrus fruits, and it also doesn't seem to have flowers or pine. Instead, we are getting spices that are sitting on top of nettles, and I am completely turned off of the beverage already. A full body is what I had hoped might counter the unpleasant beginning, but it's more of the same, and my mouth feels like it's rejecting the beer entirely. The finish is welcomed only because the beer is over.
Bottom Line: That's pretty bad.
0.25/5
