Origin: USA
Type: IPA
Color: Light amber
Alcohol content: 8.2%
Recommended serving temperature: 11ºC/52ºF
Brewery: Southern Tier Brewing Co.
Webpage: http://www.stbcbeer.com/works-2-cols/2xipa-beer-page/
The Southern Tier 2X IPA was the beer I had on the fifth and last stop in the Original Pub Tour of Charleston, at Big John's Tavern.
At this point in the tour, everybody had hit their stride. Groups were forming, people joining together to talk to one another, and the guide was the person talking less and more the one being talked to. In one word, people were pretty tipsy, me among them (before you go passing judgment, let me remind you it had been four pints and a shot in an hour and a half). This means that an average beer would not have cut it, would not have been something that caught my eye and would have probably gone un-posted.
It is a good thing then though Big John's Tavern served the Southern Tier 2X IPA.
I do not think I am unveiling anything new if I tell you that I am a fan of IPAs. That much has been established in this blog. However, I did manage to quench my thirst for them to a certain point after almost ten days in the US as you might imagine, so something different than your average IPA was necessary to justify this post, and I believe I stumbled upon it.
This beer is a double IPA, which is already a start.
It is light amber in color, a sort of clearer tone by comparison to other IPAs. It has a soapy kind of foam, pretty homogeneous, like a blanket or the surf in the sea, where it is very hard to distinguish each individual bubble. The head is pretty lasting, although of course it reduces a nice little bit after the first couple of sips, it keeps a pretty thick layer all through the time it takes you to drink it.
It has a smell of lemon and other citrical fruits which I cannot exactly pinpoint (an interesting variety of grapefruit maybe?), paired up with herbs and flowers, giving it a thick and hoppy aroma.
The taste is also citrical and grapefruity. The floral touches are not as present in the mouth as they are in its smell though. It is the citrusy touches which appear from the onset and more or less dominant throughout. The flowers and herbs come somewhere in the middle with the overall effect of giving the beer a certain consistency and body, to compensate the hoppy and citric flavors, which seem to fixate themselves less in the mouth by comparison, fading away and leaving a slight bitterness.
This bitterness is also somehow also balanced by the floral notes. This makes this beer less of a bitter bomb than one would imagine from a double IPA. Make no mistake though, it is no doubt bitter, with a nice dry citrus finish which leaves you longing for another big gulp, just not as much as the first taste forebodes.
This is precisely the specificity of this beer. Being as it is a citrusy flavored IPA, something which is traditionally a more West Coast characteristic for an IPA, it is nevertheless also herby and floral, and overall balanced, which is more of an East Coast detail in an IPA.
Aside from the relative moderation in its bitterness, the balance that this beer brings to the table can also be felt in the fact that there is virtually no alcohol taste at all to it. Impressive, especially bearing in mind that this beer is still 8.2%ABV.
All of the above makes this beer something of a mix of traits of the different types of IPAs. It has the higher than average alcohol content that the early British IPAs had, together with the citrus flavors in the West Coast American IPAs and the balance and herbs of the East Coast American IPAs, together with the vintage bitterness in this type of beer, although slightly balanced as mentioned.
The end result is a beer which, even though I might not recommend to those who do not enjoy bitter beers and specifically IPAs, I would recommend to anyone who is interested in learning more about this type of beers, as it is an accelerated class in a single sitting. A pretty good one at that.
The Southern Tier 2X IPA was the beer I had on the fifth and last stop in the Original Pub Tour of Charleston, at Big John's Tavern.
At this point in the tour, everybody had hit their stride. Groups were forming, people joining together to talk to one another, and the guide was the person talking less and more the one being talked to. In one word, people were pretty tipsy, me among them (before you go passing judgment, let me remind you it had been four pints and a shot in an hour and a half). This means that an average beer would not have cut it, would not have been something that caught my eye and would have probably gone un-posted.
It is a good thing then though Big John's Tavern served the Southern Tier 2X IPA.
I do not think I am unveiling anything new if I tell you that I am a fan of IPAs. That much has been established in this blog. However, I did manage to quench my thirst for them to a certain point after almost ten days in the US as you might imagine, so something different than your average IPA was necessary to justify this post, and I believe I stumbled upon it.
This beer is a double IPA, which is already a start.
It is light amber in color, a sort of clearer tone by comparison to other IPAs. It has a soapy kind of foam, pretty homogeneous, like a blanket or the surf in the sea, where it is very hard to distinguish each individual bubble. The head is pretty lasting, although of course it reduces a nice little bit after the first couple of sips, it keeps a pretty thick layer all through the time it takes you to drink it.
It has a smell of lemon and other citrical fruits which I cannot exactly pinpoint (an interesting variety of grapefruit maybe?), paired up with herbs and flowers, giving it a thick and hoppy aroma.
The taste is also citrical and grapefruity. The floral touches are not as present in the mouth as they are in its smell though. It is the citrusy touches which appear from the onset and more or less dominant throughout. The flowers and herbs come somewhere in the middle with the overall effect of giving the beer a certain consistency and body, to compensate the hoppy and citric flavors, which seem to fixate themselves less in the mouth by comparison, fading away and leaving a slight bitterness.
This bitterness is also somehow also balanced by the floral notes. This makes this beer less of a bitter bomb than one would imagine from a double IPA. Make no mistake though, it is no doubt bitter, with a nice dry citrus finish which leaves you longing for another big gulp, just not as much as the first taste forebodes.
This is precisely the specificity of this beer. Being as it is a citrusy flavored IPA, something which is traditionally a more West Coast characteristic for an IPA, it is nevertheless also herby and floral, and overall balanced, which is more of an East Coast detail in an IPA.
Aside from the relative moderation in its bitterness, the balance that this beer brings to the table can also be felt in the fact that there is virtually no alcohol taste at all to it. Impressive, especially bearing in mind that this beer is still 8.2%ABV.
All of the above makes this beer something of a mix of traits of the different types of IPAs. It has the higher than average alcohol content that the early British IPAs had, together with the citrus flavors in the West Coast American IPAs and the balance and herbs of the East Coast American IPAs, together with the vintage bitterness in this type of beer, although slightly balanced as mentioned.
The end result is a beer which, even though I might not recommend to those who do not enjoy bitter beers and specifically IPAs, I would recommend to anyone who is interested in learning more about this type of beers, as it is an accelerated class in a single sitting. A pretty good one at that.
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