There are excellent craft brews that you can dine on and enjoy for every day of your existence on this mortal coil and then there are a few very special few that you could only ever afford for a very special occasion. The top shelf range from brewers such as Mikkeller, Rogue and Nogne O fall into this category. So when my good friend Ash announced that he was packing his life up into little boxes and moving to the middle of the Nullaboor I decided that this was one of those occasions to dig into the reasonably pricey stuff at the Wheaty.
Being a certified hop head himself, nothing would be better then going with a strong India Pale Ale from one of my favourite breweries, Nogne O, so here it is, the Two Captains Double IPA
This beer be bitter my friends with 100 IBU (international bittering units) where the standard beer you might buy comes in around 30 to 40. IPA’s often go for a higher level of bitterness and hoppiness but either way at a 100 IBU’s this is what people would refer to as a “Hop Bomb”.
The Two Captains is the beer baby of Jan Halvor Fjeld who won the Norwegian Homebrewer of the year in 2010 and has been making this double IPA at Nogne O ever since. The beer won a bronze medal at the Australian International Beer Awards in the year just finished.
The beer pours with a huge head and a huge dose of “I am going to smack you around” bitterness. This bitterness is almost too much because it can be hard to pick up some of the floral notes that come with hops behind the monstrous bitterness.
Still once you taste it the flavors really come through. The big bitterness starts you off but the flavor follows at a slight distance behind. To use an analogy the bitterness is the hundred metre sprinter but the hop flavours run the marathon in your mouth. The citrus fruits and some really grassy notes linger. The 8.5% of the beer is not one that messes around with the taste and doesn’t diminish your enjoyment of the beer.
All up a very solid, maybe even excellent DIPA, try it out if you ever get the chance.
Till next time,
Justin
The Hit Hop 