Hitachino Nest Japanese Classic Ale

Brewed by Kiuchi Brewery
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Ibaraki, Japan

Rerate:
Sept 13, 2008
Not as good as I remember. Yeasty. Iced tea flavor. Tired bitterness. Kind of weird. Won’t lower the score just yet, but if I did, it would be something like:
6 4 6 3 13

Aug 27, 2007
Very unique ipa. Hazy murky orange appearance. Bitter body but balanced by a soft exotic sweetness like grapefruit/lychee, rounded out by a delicate cedar character. Refreshing and not syrupy like some other ipas. Complex and delicious (and again absurdly hard to find in columbus) 8 5 8 4 17

Poured a hazy amber color with a medium sized, off white head that left nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of grass, noble hoppiness, dough, and a bit of skunk. Taste of citrus, grass, lemon, some caramel, a bit of skunk, dough, and grapefruit, leading way to a dry, cedary, finish.

Pours clear orange with a moderate, fluffy head. Moderate mouth feel. Hoppy flavor with a moderate bitter finish. Aroma is warm and cedar. Very decent change of pace.

Explodes out of bottle all over the counter, five+ finger light brown head that fades slowly leaving some lace. Cloudy amber color. Medium carbonation and medium bodied. Cedar nose. Flavor is sweet cedar and apple with spices - NOT apple pie, clean finish. $3.89 for a 330ml bottle from Tully’s Beer and Wine Wells, ME.

murky copper with a medium sized creamy off-white head. floral, hoppy aroma with notes of apples and spices. flavor is hoppy and floral. cedar adds a very nice, unique, woody, sugary flavor to this. i’m a fan.

Copper-orange with a slight haze and a small, but lasting head. Aroma is peppery evergreen resin. Flavor is similar: quite a unique taste with a spicy-peppery tongue and nasal tingle, to balance some malty sweetness and a hint of alcohol. There is a lot of very different flavor here which must be from the cedar; if they hadn’t told me it was casked in cedar, I wouldn’t have been able to identify it. However, there is a dry, resiny-wood taste akin to the cedar smell (best I can come up with). It is kind of peppery-sour-woody, and gets better the more I get accustomed to it. To me the cedar is more evident in the taste; I didn’t identify cedar in the quite different aroma. I would have pegged this beer for a Belgian, with all the spicy tastes. Palate is somehow smooth and tingly at the same time, medium-bodied and somewhat dry.

Hops are there but don’t overwhelm the beer. Malts are light and sweet. A little bit of earthy wood flavor comes through, probably from the cedar. This is a damn fine pale ale, well balanced.

<Re-rate 8/14/08. Clearly, I must’ve had a past-its-prime bottle for the first go-round, as this time I really got alot more IPA character. The cedar is still substantial and persistent, but juicy, bitter, citrus hops do well to counter that. I really enjoyed this truly unique brew this time around, and I clearly prefer this, like all other IPAs, as fresh as possible. See below for original rating, and comments on appearance and palate.

Original rating 7/11/07. 6/3/6/4/15 = 3.4. Color is a cloudy orange-amber. Head is a thin white film that leaves behind small patches of lacing. The beer looks like an IPA, but that’s about where the similarities end. The cedar is very apparent in the aroma. It’s so apparent, that its all I can really concentrate on. Likewise, the flavor is so heavily geared towards cedar that I can’t get past it. This beer literally feels like I am drinking the extracted oils from fresh pressed cedar planks. After much contemplation, and careful translation from tastebuds to brain, I can detect some citrus and some toffee malts, but its not easy. The cedar taste is constantly screaming "look at me" while everything else struggles to get recognized. Say what you will, Kiuchi brews some very unique beers. Moths must hate this beer!