Russian River Pliny the Elder

Bottle from Monument Liqour in Concord, CA. Poured a copper color with a good sized white head. Smelled of citrus and floral hops. Tasted of citrus hops, pine hops, whatever hops they could find went into this beer. Too much for me. All in all a good beer, but if you’re not a hop lover it won’t be one of your favorites.

Bottle pours a clear golden color with a nice frothy white head. Has a real nice aroma to it. It reminds me of pine and citrus right away. The mouthfeel is medium and leads into a great upfront citrus blast. That leads to a great caramel malt flavor that finishes with a pine flavor. Overall this is a really nice brew. I am not sure how they managed to avoid hop haze with this one. It was so clear. Good stuff.

This stuff is annoyingly hard to find. But today I found it. And I am not disappointed. Pours light yellow-brown, with a medium white head. Smells like a barley wine. A bit of hops, but mainly rosemary and pine. There is a nice layer of peaches to offset the bitterness. The hops are stronger in the flavor, and there is a resiny pine flavor as well. A bit of lime. I like my imperial IPAs to have a creamier mouthfeel that this. But overall, this is not bad. Not bad at all.

500mL Bottle. Pours a clear golden amber with a massive two-finger puffy white head that hangs around for ages leaving a wall of lacing all the way around the glass. Smell absolutely jumps out of the bottle. Massive, massive hop aroma with huge pine scents up front, like walking into a pine forest. Grapefruit, oranges, lemons, all kinds of wonderful floral and citrus scents in this one. World class smell. Taste is almost as impressive as the smell with citrus hops up front with grapefruit and lemons. The bready malt backbone shows up a little bit in the middle before the pine blast kicks in to provide a wonderfully bitter finish. Mouthfeel is medium bodied with strong carbonation that zings the tongue with hop bitterness and sticks on the palate for a while. This is a world class example of a DIPA and probably the new standard for me.

Bottled On Date July 10, 2008; Sampled July 17, 2008
A soft pour produces a three-finger thick, light tan colored head in my 25cl tulip glass. The beer is just so expressively pungeant with hop aromatics that just jump out at me as I am pouring this beer. It sits in my glas with a light amber, copper hue and shows a clear, bright gold hue when held up to the light. The aroma is just sticky with hop character; huge lychee notes, super ripe apricot, bright tropical fruit notes, candied grapefruit, expansive tangelo and Curacao orange peel are all easily noticeable. The other side of the hop aroma spectrum lurks just below the fruit notes with herbal notes that are quite floral, some pine that adds some backbone to the aroma and a light, dank, hemp-oil like note that adds just a bit of an edge to this brew. What I love about the aroma is the focus on the fruity hop notes, but it still has some of the more herbal notes that add a touch of offset and a touch of contrast. If you really dig for it some cracker-like malt notes are just noticeable underneath all of the dominating hop aromatics.

Aggressively bitter up front, though not overwhelmingly so, this is quite herbal as it first hits the tongue, but becomes redolent of super ripe hop fruit flavors through the middle and finish. At this point the bitterness kicks in again and a clean, biting hop note lingers on the tongue for quite some time after the beer has left my mouth. Pine-sap flavors up front yield to tropical fruit notes of lychees, almost pineapple and other fruit flavors of apricot, peach and ripe tangelo. The explosive up front fruit flavors seem to get scraped from my palate by the aggressive herbal and pine notes that seem to get more pronounced with every sip. A short respite from the beer seems to accentuate the fruit notes a bit more again, but it is still as if my tongue has been scraped by some very herbal hops that have left a permanent mark. Still this aggressively herbal hop character (that is definitely riding the edge of being laden with hemp oil) never buries the hop-fruit flavors. While certainly not light, this is eminently drinkable; not so heavy that it has not business having the letters of IPA on the label; this is my definitive example of what the texture and heft of a double IPA should be.

The aroma of this beer is just so nice; the dominant hop fruit notes are perfectly controlled by the softer herbal hop character. The flavor is a bit more herbal in balance and is quite scathing in its hop attack. Still the bitter, sharply herbal hop notes never get out of control, but this beer still makes me feel like my tongue has been abused and scraped raw by the aggressive hop character. This is most definitely a well constructed brew, and in some aspects this is quite definitive for the style. A benchmark for the style that I will never get enough of.

Sampled NHC 2004
Total 4.2, 9/4/9/4/16
Rest a lightly hazy copper color in my glass. This has an in-your-face orange aroma on it. An intense hop taste is found here, but it still manages to be quite smooth. This is a citrusy, grapefruit, nectarlicious hop bomb. This beer has a tangy zing quality to it, this just zaps my taste buds. This beer is defined by it’s over the top hoppiness, yet still manages to by a smooth hop hit. There are lots of pine notes as well as an equal level of grapefruit notes in this beer. All in all this is a very well made double IPA, what else can you expect from the guy who is credited with inventing the style.