Lagunitas Freak Out

Formerly brewed at Lagunitas Brewing Company
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Petaluma, California USA

Double malt aroma, spiced bitterness and overall a smooth, sweet, hop jucied IPA. You could have a personal freak out after a few bombers of this ode to the album, Freak Out! After reviewing the ratings, I think this beer may be misunderstood an underestimated like Frank Zappa’s music was.

Dark yellow color. Hoppy aroma. After a while of smelling it, detected some sweeter tones in there. Crisp hop taste with a fairly even palate. Leaving a little grapefruit on the tongue.

Dark yellow color. Big hoppy aroma at first. After a while of smelling it, i’m detecting some sweeter tones in there. Crisp hop taste with a fairly even palate that seems to melt on the tongue, leaving only a little grapefruit streak on the tongue.

22 oz bottle. Orange with light lacing. Light and grainy with a spicy noble hop presence. Interesting. Light grainy-biscuit flavor with hints of sweetness. Strong noble hop presence that are woody with hints of grass and spice. It starts out very bitter, but mellows as is warms up a bit. Wet, medium body with a lightly dry bitter finish. Not to bad. very English in the hop profile.

Pours a pale orange and yellow with a whitish fizzy head that’s not around too long, but is very "talktative". The opening is pretty standard resiny hop perfumes and florals at first, soon replaced by more citrusy types like lemon and orange. Malts peek through the nose for a second, but are gone as quickly. As I recognize a bit of grapefruit, I get this crazy overall sensation of a super-lemony dessert like a lemon merangue pie. It takes a while to get over. The beer is medium bodied with active carbonation. The beer is extremely well balanced. There will be no complaints about too much bitter, and the citric acidity give a drying aspect. The malts are indeed subtle, as some have suggested, but they hold things together well. The beer finishes medium-long and balanced with a metallic tint. This is a nice IPA which is a little better than ordinary, especially if you let it warm enough. I’m not going to go out of my way to find it, though.

22 oz Bomber purchased at Green’s in Atlanta. The aroma is a big citrusty blast with floral and caramel notes. The body is a dull muted yellow/orange with a frothy pinky sized white head that fades slowly. Citrus laden hops in the fore feature grapefruit, orange zest, soft floral bitterness like rose petals, caramel malt, toasted bready notes, pine and almost no hint of the alcohol. My kind of IPA....hoppy, but balanced and with a bit of range to it.

The beer pours a brilliant deep gold/orange with a thick, cloudy, gorgeous, nearly white head. The aroma is quite malty with some yeast, but also the characteristic presence of hops - flowery hops with a touch of citrus. The beer’s flavor begins quite flowery and peppery with hops, but also malty. The middle of the flavor shows a little more malt flavors - some caramel, some butterscotch, and hints of fruit - but also begins to show more of the hop bitterness - like a pine cone with some peppercorn, cloying to the middle of the tongue, drying it out. The finish is both full-bodied on the back of the tongue (buttery), but also dry and bitter with a very longer and hoppy after-taste. This is a well-balanced and well-cone ale. Its flavors are all a little more subtle than in typical big American IPAs (the malts not as sweet, the hops certainly less pronounced) - but it remains malty and hoppy and delicious.

22oz bottle-pours a thick to rocky offwhite head that laces with yellow color. Aroma is lots of sweet citrus hops, zesty, perfumy. Taste is lots of sweet citrus hops-grapefruit, bitter, zesty, pine, faint light malt. OK carbonation.