21 November 2012

Hop Karma Brown IPA vs. India Style Brown Ale




Can you spot the difference? This is the stuff you've got to look for as a beer hunter. This is essentially the same beer, but there's one striking difference; the name. One may wonder, Do they taste the same?
Let's find out...

Hop Karma Brown IPA came before India Style Brown IPA. As a matter of fact, the Hop Karma was the first beer I ever had by Terrapin Beer and I was immediately hooked. On the label reads, "Peace, Love, and Hoppiness". You've got that right, god dammit.

Hop Karma Brown IPA

Sticking your nose into the Hop Karma, you get the immediate sensation of going-against-the-grain. After all, who in their right mind would try to marry a brown ale and an IPA? It's a good thing they tried because it works wonderfully, and everything you would expect to be present is. Nutty brown, and medium amount of hops. 
Tasting it brings your senses on a level playing ground. Taste, smell, and mouthfeel, all realigned. Screw ginger before sushi, drink this if you want your shit in line. 
Toasted nuts, brown ale, notes of chocolate (not cocoa), bitterness, and slight-slight coffee trickling it's way into the sidebands. I managed to get weird a draw a diagram of what's going on:

NOTE: It's very hard to reference nuts and sweetness while looking at the diagram of a tongue. You've got to be daring. You've got to get weird. Be daring to keep your bearing(s). That's the motto tonight. Don;t like it? Good, move your mouse to the top right or left depending on your operating system, and click the red X. Ok, now that the riff-raff is gone, let's continue: 
Think about the creator of DragonBall Z, or the creator of the website PenIsland.com. These people are up with the times. Sometimes you have to hurt someone (or yourself) to help many. 

At the very back of the tongue rests the watchdog hoppiness. It's WATCHING, not managing, the rest of the operation. Moving forward is the toasty nuttiness. THIS is managing everything else. I'll elaborate in a minute.... 
The alcohol layer is there to let you know that this is indeed a beer, and a damn good one at that. Simply put, the sweetness up front fades into the alcohol which fades into the nutty and then into the hops. Here's where things get interesting. NORMALLY, the hops and the alcohol rest in the back together and they cancel each other out. That's why you hear people say, "Wow! This is a great IPA!" -- Because it's BALANCED. 
Terrapin has managed to toss in the nuttiness and brown ale layers at JUST THE RIGHT amount to add to, but keep everything balanced. An incredible feat, if you ask me. 

Imagine someone juggling bowling pins, and someone tosses an axe in for good measure. Pretty frigin cool, huh? That's the best metaphor I can give at the moment.

The hops are keeping watch while the brown ale layer keeps everything in line. It's coursing through the whole thing like some kind of swirl in your whipped cream. Oh, it's present, and it's here to stay. Get used to it. 

The sweetness (and this is going to sound weird) I can relate to carrots. You know that little sharp spike of "vegetable" that you get from carrots? Well take the sweetness from a really sweet carrot and take that bit of sharpness/bitterness and that's what you'll get on the front end of your tongue. It's weird, I know. I'm not saying that there's carrot juice in here, I'm just saying that it's very similar. What ever they did, they did it right. It;s different and that's what you want, right? Probably why you're reading this write-up. It's what I have personally coined, "The Unorthodox Beer Review".


India Style Brown IPA

Well, the've done it. They have reproduced the beer without compromising anything. It's the same, save for it tasting fresher because it is newer. The Hop Karma held up very well. I am surprised how well because I had that beer back in I believe LATE 2008- EARLY 2009 and Terrapin was still using gold bottle caps. The India Style Brown IPA also had a gold cap but it's still newer. The difference? More fresh. 

Enjoy.

NOTE II: I had a MUCH longer write-up written about this whole thing but google decided to flip some switch somewhere and I lost 90% of the article, thus I had to re-write everything. I must add that I had quite the ramble going -- I managed to hit that sweet spot where the fingers flow as quick as the thoughts and everything was conveyed beautifully. Like I said, I had to rewrite it all.... or try to for that matter, replicating what had been. Let it be known: I am pissed. 

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