262. BBC Rye IPA 75

Our third beer from Bluegrass Brewing Company, which is still located in Louisville, KY; we’ve previously sampled Brandy Barrel Aged Queen’s Knickers and Bluegrass American Pale Ale.

Rye IPA 75 pours a deep copper with a minimal ivory head; the nose is spicy, mostly from the rye, with some resiny hop aromas running around the edges of the spicy. Starting with rye spiciness and some caramel sweetness, Rye IPA move into some bitterness and hop resin flavors before finishing with a return of caramel sweetness and more of the rye spiciness, with a bit of lingering bitterness from the hops. The mouthfeel is a bit thick, syrupy, and quite heavy; it has a decent amount of legs on the glass, is a bit goopy in the mouth, and is much heavier that one would expect for a 7.5% ABV beer—it has a viscosity and movement in the glass that we haven’t really seen before in a beer. The hop flavors are good, but they don’t stand up to the thick malt and rye body; the nose is more rounded and even than the body and flavor profile. The carbonation is medium to low, but rounds the beer nicely into the finish. This beer would be better with a lighter body; the nose and flavors are good, but the body is too big and sticky for the beer as it currently stands—they need to up the ABV to make this an Imperial, or lighten the body. But the current beer is more in between—while that could make it a DIPA, it still has too much body with not enough payoff for that category. Stripping back the body to make this a solid Rye IPA seems the best direction to head.

From the Bluegrass website: “Gorgeous orange color, bright fresh clean hops, delicious hops dominate but nice minty rye flavor is very good, well done crisp beer; nice job, like the kick the rye gives.”

ABV: 7.5%

(3/19/2010)