Always a happy thing on Wednesday hophead night at Barleys – a flute of Double IPA:
Happy for me, anyway – Tony wanted nothing more than for me to stop reviewing and get on with drinking and chatting. Further proof that I am the world’s worst person to drink with for five minutes of every beer.
Basic Info:
Name: 471 IPA
Origin: Breckenridge Brewery, Breckenridge, CO
Style: Double/Imperial IPA
ABV: 9.2%
IBU: 70
I drank this: on tap at Barleys, Overland Park
The 471 has a sweet, malty nose with loads of grapefruit-scented hops shot through with hints of caramel. It’s a much sweeter, maltier scent than I’m used to with Imperial IPAs - they’re often so hoppy that the hops are the entirety of the scent – this beer really does a nice job of letting the malts into the nose.
Drinking it, the first flavors are strong hints of butterscotch and toffee, sweet and smooth and sugary. After that, the citrusy hops pile in, loads and loads of sweet oranges and red and pink grapefruit. The flavor profile tends heavy towards the sweeter citrus fruits. There are also some hints of white and yellow florals - the mental picture I got was for some reason of those tiny little flowers that tend to grow as weeds in peoples’ lawns and which, when I was five or so, I enjoyed eating. The floral note in the beer adds a hint of a soft note to the beer, helping to smoothe out the hefty mouthfeel.
Overall, this is the beer equivalent of drinking candied citrus peel. It’s quite possibly the sweetest beer I’ve ever had didn’t involve a Belgian yeast strain or some kind of fruit – not overwhelmingly or cloyingly sweet, but definitely sweeter than drier. I liked it – it was a happy hop bomb for a Wednesday evening in June.
