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Well, this has been a less-than-stellar winter so far, with me being too sick to review much good ole craft beer. Seriously, Mother Nature, wake the fuck up. We're ten days into spring and have now just had two good days. Sigh. That's not to say that we haven't been picking up and stashing a ton for later reviews, it's just that I've been too congested to really get a feel for the nuances of many beers. That is not to say that I've merely been drinking swill; nay, we've had plenty of good stuff recently.
So, remember how much we love love love Knee Deep Brewing??? Yeah, we almost forgot, too, until their brews hit the market again recently. They recently quintupled their production capacity, so now we can get more of their yummy brews. We attended a Knee Deep tasting recently, and discovered this as well as a couple of other treasures from this wonderful brewery. We chatted with the distributing rep for awhile and we learned that somewhere, somehow, this particular brew was rated better than Pliny the Elder in a blind side-by-side taste test. Hmmmm. This certainly piqued my interest. Let's see how it stacks up to some beers we can readily get here in Ohio.
It pours a deep golden color with a fluffy, light toffee-colored head. The aroma is grapefruit, malty sweetness, oranges, with a note of orange peel toward the back. Oh, and there's a hint of booze in the aroma. Yeah. Taking a sip, my taste buds are confronted by earthy flavors up front which yield quickly to bright citrus fruit flavors, which then fade out to pine needles toward the back end. There's a blast of grapefruit toward the middle and it sticks throughout the finish. There's a hit of caramel toward the middle from the extra malts that give this the oomph to be considered a Double IPA. Candidly, I recall this being much better and hoppier at the tasting than it is now. Don't get me wrong: it's a solid, tasty, delicious brew. It's well-balanced, let's say. It's just not quite as hoppy as I remember, and being the unabashed hop lover I am, I want the hops to come through just a tinge more than they do in this. The mouthfeel on this is just solid; that it's a well-balanced beer really comes through at every sip.
4.75/5 caps
-Jennie
Ah, Knee Deep. Many memories have been spent with your
Hop Shortage,
Simtra, and
McCarthy's Bane. We've missed your distribution here in Ohio, but understand your need to expand. Apparently, since our last review of them (where we had a Knee Deep drought), they expanded to 4x their size, have a tap room and plan to expand to 16 states (instead of the previous 5). Good things are worth the wait. I emailed them recently to compliment them on their selections and to find out the background of their name. I was thinking it was drawn inspiration from the Funkadelic song "(Not Just) Knee Deep". Apparently I was far off. CEO Jerry Moore replied with "The short version of the answer is that "Knee Deep" refers to the depth of the snow one night in Reno when our Brewmaster was doing an 'all night' brew session."
As Jennie mentioned, we recently went to a tasting, and that's where we first tasted this 9%, 102 IBU behemoth. Talking with the distributor, who has a few bottles of Pliny at home, I asked him his personal preference between the two. He said they're both fantastic beers, but couldn't pick one. Fair enough. As someone who has never tasted Pliny (if you would like to send us a bottle to review, contact us), I have to take the word of mouth from others on this matter. Speaking of matter, I believe I'm supposed to review this.
This is a deep golden, almost amber color with some light head still sticking around. As this has had time to warm up, I'm catching grapefruit and citrus heavy on the nose with hints of sweetness from the malts. According to Knee Deep's website, this contains Cascade, Citra, Columbus, Magnum and Hersbrucker hops. The "C" hops come out heavy in the nose at this point. The first sip of this near room temp IPA is fantastic. Sweetness blending with citrus, tropical and grapefruit notes make the front fantastic. The middle is sweeter with the malt flavors (biscuit and caramel flavors). The finish is dry with a nice pine and grapefruit flavor to it. This drinks like a good IPA should, medium mouthfeel with decent carbonation, and a nice resiny stickiness that lingers.
Oh yes, Knee Deep, welcome back to our fridge.
4.9/5 caps
-Nathan-
Music Pairing: Funkadelic "(Not Just) Knee Deep" (I don't care about the real answer, this will always play in my head when I see your name)
Food Pairing: BBQ Pork
Cheese Pairing: Vermont Extra Sharp White Cheddar
