Newport Storm Cyclone Series Chloe

Formerly brewed at Coastal Extreme Brewing Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Middletown, Rhode Island USA

Poured from a 12oz bottle a dark caramel, leaving a tan head about 1in thick. The aroma is sweet, hop floural, frosting sweet smell, honey and spices. The taste on the palate is very bitter up front, but balanced with a honey, malty, sweetness. Only to be attacked with a grapefruit bitterness that finishes with a warming alcohal presence. Good DIPA, haven’t had a newport storm in awhile I will def be coming back to this one.

Was a bit worried when I saw the label reading 56 IBU’s.....rather weak count for a IIPA. Pours out a cloudy copper color with a small head. Aroma is somewhat hoppy, but overall rather plain. Taste confirms my earlier fears of not enough hops. Malty taste with a noticible alcohol taste, this beer was all around good if it was maybe an American strong. Leans too far to the malty side.

Thanks to old growth for this bottle. Cloudy orange colour. not much to the aroma, a bit malty. Taste is a kinda week, a bit of hops, dry finish with a bit of malt. Not the best IIPA.

12oz bottle: Slight malty aroma with a hint of hops. A nice cloudy copper in the glass. The flavor is tight and weak. A very malty blandness with a hop coating and a slight alcohol tingle. Looks good in the glass but quite ordinary. Actually less than.

Pours pale orange into a shaker. Small bubbled head with nice retention. Slight chill haze. Citrus and pine notes. Up front citrus/dairy balance with sweet hop finish. Not sure about this one. Imperial taste....but too sweet to really be an IIPA... almost like a barleywine?

Bottle, from Julio’s. Couldn’t make out the bottle code. Good nose, sweet. Citrusy, floraly. Orange marmalade, butter(in a good way), tea, grapefruit, lime, cardboard. Ok head that faded to a ring, minor lacing. Bitter flavor, tart. Citrusy. Like aroma with grapefruit leading the way. Thicker bodycreamy viscous mouthfeel, Bitter finish. Good as an IPA, loses a notch as a IIPA

Unfiltered orange. Fine-sized bubbles are slow to surface, eventually establishing a retentive white froth. Fairly fruity nose of nectarines and melon seeds with a dusting of pinewood and diacetyl. Plentiful carbonation, but rather edgy and hard. Initially mushy, teetering on tacky, and slickly fruity. Lightly toasty Munich dominates the malt frame while spicy alcohol amplifies its toffeelike sweetness. Hop character is undefined and overly busy early on, but it soon clutches onto the palate with a lime-peel bitterness as it progresses. Too much body-lessening acidity results from the citrusy elements and it’s all downhill from there. Hops possess nary a splash of juiciness to squelch the dirtiness and it remains hot with alcohol. Yeast and carbonation generate a chalky residue which lingers on the palate for some time, creating more disharmony between the continually hot alcohol and dull, tacky fruitiness. Just dull and lifeless, all around. With the exception of the alcoholic warmth, this isn’t particularly offensive. It’s just aromatically dull and unpolished, rampant with hard carbonation, highly lacking malt depth, and the hops taste stringy and dirty. This needs some serious reassessing. Thanks, michiganmiked.

2006 bottle shared with OldGrowth on 3/5/06
Thick, lightly yellow-flecked white head shows fair retention, but little if any lacing. Liquid is quite clear, and a rosy-coppery orange color, with just a slight more red tones than in most double IPAs. The nose is just a huge burst of heavy floral-resinous hops, quite bitter, with little touches of dry fruits (nectarines, apricots) and some light munich-like malts. Quite one-sided, the malt just comes off as dry/sour, while the hops just bombard you with the aforementioned floral-resin. The flavor is more of the same. Tons of high-alpha acid bitterness, stinging acid on end, dry and unbalanced, with little malt sweetness. Grainy munich malt never seems to be able to balance an already heavily dry, bitter hop assault and this is no exception. Some light breadiness builds as well as a mix of crystal and pale malts, but the hoped-for sweetness as it warms never really appears (some light stickiness is about the extent of it). Moderately watery texture, average carbonation and just not enough malt. White grapefruit and orange rinds build on the end. Alcohol is well-concealed, yeast is not apparent.
Not trying to single out Newport (because almost all brewers do it), but this beer is a prime of example of how hopping the hell out of a beer just dosent cut it. Anyone can throw a ton of hops in to a beer. Russian River, AleSmith and Pizza Port show that a beer can be every bit as hoppy as the next guy, but also balanced and complex.