Review: Weyerbacher Double Simcoe IPA

I was very excited to obtain this beer, brewed by Weyerbacher located in Easton, PA. The marketing pitch for this beer is that it has all the hop flavor with none of the harsh bitterness, due to exclusively using Simcoe hops. It went from a seasonal release to a year-round'er now that it has become so popular, and scores a very good 4.21 average on BA.

It pours a very murky brownish (a little red and orange thrown in with some light) with a very nice fluffy, well-developed head. Fruit and citrus burst into the nose, and the 9% alcohol stings the nostrils during longer whiffs. If you search hard, or just get lucky (as in my case) there also seems to be a bit of caramel flavor that can be detected below the huge rush of hops. The taste is very single dimensional in the hops category, as you would expect. You can tell the flavor is coming from one hop and not from a bunch of different ones because it's straight forward. A lot of juicy fruit and citrus but it finishes a bit dry.

I confess that, though this is a pretty good beer, I would take many many other Double IPA's over it. For instance, Ruination, Pliny, Dorado, Hop 15, Hopsickle, Maharaja, Racer X, and others. Hint, Hint, I like the West Coast interpretations of Double IPA's. Though Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA was fairly good, Double Simcoe missed the target on my palate just a bit. And though I know the East Coast makes good Double IPA's (Hop Wallop is one of my all-time favorites), I would say I need to try more from the other coast to give them a fair chance before I proclaim that the West Coast definitely rules.