Surly Furious

Brewed by Surly Brewing Company
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota USA

On tap at the Dock Cafe in Stillwater, MN. Another beer rating succumbed to the usually helpful text message cleanup on my cell phone. This was a strong IPA, with the hops kick of a Double IPA but apparently not the alcohol content. Big, fresh, rindy, grapefruity hops blasted through the creamy, soft, bready, somewhat sweet malt backbone. Lingering bitter finish.

Can courtesy of Sammy: Poured a deep dark brown color ale with huge dirty white foamy head with great retention and lacing. Aroma of piney and citrus hops is huge and dominating the aroma. Taste is a mix between strong caramel and toffee malt with some sweetness balancing the strong piney and citrus hops. The ending is quite bitter as you can imagine but some subtle floral notes were providing more complexity which was appreciated. Body is full with some low filtration which was quite enjoyable.

Cloudy amber with a lasting white head leaving some lace. Strong hoppy aroma with peach, apricot and a little pine. Sweetish malty, with some peach hop flavour, lots of bitterness and a delicious juicy drinkability.

Can. Deep amber with a fluffy white head. Aroma is sweet fresh hops, like hops added to boiling wort. I’m not normally a fan of hop monster beers, but there is something differnt going on here. Has all of the good citrus and piney hop flavors and plenty of bitterness, but somehow seems tolerable at 100 IBU’s. The hop flavor is so fresh and the malt somehow seems to balance the whole deal somehow. Not an everyday beer for my palate, but surprisingly enjoyable.

Reddish colour with large eggshell head on top. The head colapses after a few minutes into a coating on top with extra clinging to the sides of the glass. It feels like I opened a fresh bag of hops when I stick my nose into the glass. Very grassy with some grapefruit and cirtus. The body is right in the middle, not thick and sticky, and could never be confused with being thin. The taste is big! Hops dominate the flavour with a big upfront slap of slightly bitter and hugely citrus hops. It’s like hop juice was poured into this to get this amount of hops. The amazing thing is that this balances out with a great malty aftertaste. The hop flavours remina, but that balance is essential and tames the hops down a bit. It’s amazing that they are able to acheive this balance. 9/4/7/3/16-3.9 Copper colouring with a foamy tall head. Aroma is mostly floral hops, maybe some citrus in there as well. Mostly bitter hops taste that’s not very well balanced out by the malts. 7/3/4/3/11-2.8

gigantic sized grapefruit citrusy hop with some pinecone bitterness tagging along. not as much malt flavors as I approve and not enough juicy ftuitness to justify the extreme bitterness but a solid drinking potent bitter ipa.

Courtesy of Styles

Bottle: Great aroma of pineapple and citrus hops with some faint caramel. It pours a slightly hazy amber with a small off-white head that lasts a minute or so and leaves behind sporadic lacing. The flavor starts with some light caramel that gets dominated quickly by citrusy hops and pineapple in the finish. Grapefruit bitterness lingers in the aftertaste for quite some time. Medium bodied with soft carbonation.

this is a good American style IPA, but what’s the fuss? Unbalanced, can-conditioned, great aroma c-hoppy with bubbly head and grapefruity body, carbonation and mouthfeel average. A hophead feed, but I have had higher IBU that is more drinkable.