It's Magic

Beer Ritz - sold out in a few hours...

Ales By Mails - sold out too...

Beer Paradise - yup all gone as well...

I'm pretty sure any other establishments who purchased this beer to stock won't have any left either. It seems like this beer is the most anticipated beer of the moment, and with beer geek driven sales, I actually can't remember the last time a beer was given this much hype and came and left the shelves so quickly.

The beer you ask?

It's a tad cloudy Stu! ;)

It's the very recently released Un-Human Cannonball Triple IPA from Magic Rock. When I first saw "Triple IPA" I thought there would be some Belgian aspect involved... turns out it was just in relation to the 12% this bad boy brings to the table... funny how they then put it in the biggest bottle they've ever commercially put out ;)

So does the beer stand up to the hype, the geek banter and the expectations??

Well the aroma is very intriguing, as you can't really nail down any one specific dominant flavour, just a multitude and complexity of different aspects. It smells of peach skins, candy floss, lemon drops, some chocolate orange, citrus peel, caramel malts, green apple skin, mango and apricot and almost a little floral perfume, it's probably the most subtle but in your face aroma you'll find in an English IPA, if you can call it that... and if that makes any sense.

The flavour?

Well, it's a little all over the place to begin with. You get an immediate huge hit of caramel malt bitter sweetness which is atop some butterscotch flavour among some green salad, strangely.. (cucumber?) There's a lot of watermelon fruitiness alongside peaches, mangos and lots more citrus fruits - it's a basic fruit salad in a glass! As the flavour and the decent carbonation fizz fade on the swallow you're left with an incredible warming sensation from the 12%, and why wouldn't you to be fair... Trust me, it's not a beer you can drink quick, you really do get the sense that this is a powerhouse. Some pine notes now with some evergreen tree bark, which might just overshadow the citrus a little too much for me, but the bitter bite is still clearly there.

As it goes down a bit more and warms up, a lot more of that caramel sweetness comes about, it kind of reminds me of a Dogfish Head 120min I had a while back, which wasn't exactly fresh, but I didn't exactly complain about it...

I think it's the complexity and the randomess that really makes this beer work for me. Every time you take a sip (gulp) you get a different aspect to the beer, and that's something that I think makes this beer really interesting. I've had far too many pints before in the past where I've gotten bored of the flavour by the last few gulps... this continues to change and evolve on the palate. That might not fly with some people, but that's why I really enjoy this beer.

Fair play to Magic Rock. They're one brewery that I can proudly say, like to stretch those boundaries, but don't push them down your throat.

Long may they continue.