I sometimes think we’re not experimenting enough, as a society, with hoppy beer. Sure, it seems like someone’s cultivated a new hop every month, sometimes bringing brand new flavors to the table, but most brewers seem largely content to let the hops stand on their own, rather than try to find interesting adjuncts to pair them with. Maybe I’m spoiled, as a stout-lover: Brewers have no compunctions about throwing all kinds of shit into a stout, from coffee to chocolate to cherries to coconut and curry. And there are prominent exceptions: Stone Brewing’s Dayman Coffee IPA and R&R Coconut IPA are just two of my favorites among their many delicious bastardizations of the IPA style. Ballast Point’s Grapefruit Sculpin reportedly outsells the original recipe, and Habanero Sculpin is my go-to when I need a chile beer fix. But the overwhelming majority of hop-forward beers are just hop-forward beers, and that’s okay, I guess, but when I see someone like Wicked Weed Brewing trying to do something a little different, I’m always going to give it a shot.
Wicked Weed is in my estimation a very good brewery, overall, and probably best known for its excellent sours. Unfortunately, last year it became a member of the Anheuser-Busch family of brands, which I know is a deal-breaker for some. I’m sympathetic to that; for me, it helps that the people behind Budweiser seem to have mostly kept their hands off their new craft brew brands, leaving them to conduct themselves much as they did before and not, say, forcing Goose Island to release Bourbon County Brand Stout Light & Clamato Chilada. As far as I can tell, that’s held true for Wicked Weed specifically; they’re still brewing some inventive recipes, including today’s beer: Wicked Weed Hop Cocoa, a hoppy porter with chocolate added.
Hop Cocoa foams up substantially when opened and poured into the glass, but most of the head dissipates in short order. The beer’s dark brown to black, as porters tend to be. The scent of the beer is pretty faint, and the chocolate in it isn’t immediately recognizable. The rich, sweet milk chocolate does come through at first sip, but man, it disappears in a hurry, buried under an avalanche of hops. The beer’s long, hoppy finish is citric, which you might think would complement the initial chocolatey sweetness in the manner of a chocolate orange, but instead it’s citric in a way that way that completely washes out that chocolate. The hops themselves are very nice, crisp and clean, but I’m wondering if Hop Cocoa might have fared better with juicier hops along the lines of Citra or Mosaic, something with a greater depth of fruit flavor to play off the chocolate without obliterating it.
I do like the beer, so I hope it’s not too harsh to say that for me, this experiment wasn’t a complete success. It’s an interesting study in sweet-bitter contrast, but I don’t get anything from this particular combination of flavors that I don’t feel I could get get in more satisfying fashion from a good black IPA. If you like that sort of beer, as I do, then this may well be up your alley. Just don’t go in hoping to be surprised.
tl;dr: I forgot to say something about the subject of the last Beer Barrel: It’s not very good, so if you absolutely must buttchug something, make it that beer, and not this one
make it snow is an alot of beer and amateur cat wrangler. He drank two cans of Hop Cocoa while writing this review; lady snow is off this week. Happy Valentine’s Week and please remember to tip your cherub.
Well written!
These guys experiment well:
http://lefthandbrewing.com/
And you tried many of the Dogfish, but they do some out of the ordinary IPAs.
I like to try; a serving or sampler flight of the mixed IPAs; really like trying them and saying that’s INTERESTING. For my sixers in the fridge I’ll usually have a bold hoppy IPA or two when I want to make the palate work and several more balanced IPAs for pairing with food. I don’t usually get the mixed, experimental IPAs for home.
The one I got from the work beer exchange is
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/25436/69636/
Intriguing to say the least. Interesting how different some of the tastes people get from it, it sounds fairly complex. I’ll let you know if I remember (it’s 7%ABV).
https://copperkettledenver.com/
I’ve seen that Copper Kettle Mexican Stout a few places but haven’t been able to talk myself into it so far. I’ll definitely give it a shot now. And I love Left Hand; their Beer Week Sauce is still one of the best straight-up coffee stouts I’ve ever had.
Lady Snow being off this week makes this review invalid.
Wow, bad week for Congress to gut the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I hate hops. I hate IPAs.
Unlike many IPA lovers, I think this is a perfectly valid position.
Hops are in almost every beer; these posts are not for you.
I mean, there’s a big difference between beers where hops are the focal point and beers where hops are just there to tamp down the sweetness.
I guess what I’m saying is no one hates hops but a lot of people hate noticing them.
“The rich, sweet milk chocolate does come through at first sip, but man, it disappears in a hurry, buried under an avalanche of hops. The beer’s long, hoppy finish is citric, which you might think would complement the initial chocolatey sweetness in the manner of a chocolate orange, but instead it’s citric in a way that way that completely washes out that chocolate.”
This is exactly why I don’t drink Hops and Chocolate. It sounds incredible, but it’s never executed the way it needs to be for me to want to buy a six pack, let alone regularly buy the Hops and Chocolate beer. It’s one of life’s great disappointments.
Hop, Cocoa is also how Jerry Richardson tells guys at the combine to demonstrate their vertical
Garage band or new Gronk-mutated STD?
The bitter part is why I’m not a big fan of heavily hopped beers. The hops tend to overwhelm my palate like you described with this one. So much so that I can’t taste anything else. That’s why I tend to go with stouts and porters as my go-tos.