Beer Review: King Sue (Toppling Goliath Brewing Co.)

Finally…. finally… must I say it again? Finally! I got to try this amazing and delicious beer. And it is completely all the hype that there is about it, and it lives up to it and then some. This is just an incredible beer that drank down so fast, I probably could have ordered four or five before realizing it (or realizing where I was, or the ABV, or cost), because this was that easy of a drink to quaff down and the booze on this is so subtle and barely perceptible – until it hits you square across the face after your done drinking it!

I’ve been wanting to check out the Gin Mill in Lebanon for a while, and been receiving Untappd notifications about them as a verified venue, and getting Facebook alerts on them and stuff, and seeing that they get a pretty good lineup going, I finally made the drive after work to get there. It was very worth it. Foreign Objects, LIC Beer Project, Dewey Beach Beer, Toppling Goliath, with Rotunda Brewing, Pipeworks, and more Dewey on their on-deck, I would definitely say they know craft beer and know quality beer. They had a range of stouts / porters with two on Nitro, some middle of the road IPAs / lower quality craft beers, as well as the heavy hitter hops and sours. The place is part dive bar, part good food restaurant, and they were well busy on a Monday night at 730-845 when I left. I got three beers while there – King Sue (Toppling Goliath), Intergalactic Warrior (Toppling Goliath), and Key Lime & Tangerine (Dewey Beer); and all three were fantastic. So lets start with the first one – King Sue and break her down.

Beer: King Sue
Brewery: Toppling Goliath Brewing Co.
Style: IPA – Double / New England
ABV: 7.8%
IBU: 100
Untappd Write-Up: This lusciously hazy double IPA gains its hints of mango, orange, and pineapple from the use of the delicious Citra hop.

While that looks like a crazy amount of IBU; it hides it all, there is practically no bitterness to this, just a slight dryness. Its all juice, its all delicious, and it is definitely “luscious”.

Excuse the pictures a bit, their dark, and the bar area of the Gin Mill was dark, so not wanting to be a disturbance or the weirdo at the bar I chose not to use the flash, and so the pictures came out a bit dark, but I still think they show how beautiful this beer is. And it is certainly a beautiful beer. The color of orange juice, with a haze and an opaqueness with no sediment. It has a great head with lots of foam, lots of carbonation, that is overflowing the draft pour.

The aroma is fantastic as well, very hoppy, very juicy hoppy, you get bright powerful notes of the fruity hops, mango, orange, citrus, pineapple, it all hits you and it hits you powerfully. Even in a full bar with lots of other beers, foods, people around, I got the whiff of the fruity hops as soon as my bartender sat it down in front of me. Its like a sucker punch from a fruit cocktail with hops right at your nose.

…and then you get to the taste. You wouldn’t even know this was a beer, or alcohol. Its straight juice. Like GOOD juice. Like Sunny D when you were a kid and you came inside from playing with your Tonka Trucks on a dirt pile. This is immediately wonderful. There is no bad things to even say about this. You get all the citrus notes, you get multiple fruity hop notes, you get orange, mango, pineapple, citrus, you get hop, you get juice, all in a fantastic wonderful dance in your mouth. There is a slight dryness to it, but with how juicy it is, its basically cancelled out. Even saying it sounds oxymoronic, but it is there, its probably from the 100 IBU or the yeast strain. But there is this slight dryness at the same time as its so juicy. This goes down so smoothly, so easily. Nothing cloying, nothing too heavy, just the right mouthfeel. You don’t taste or feel the 7.8% ABV until its finished and you go to order your next. I could see a four pack or six pack of this being very problematic on a hot summer day when I’m supposed to be getting chores done. (…in so far as this would mean zero chores would be getting done.)

I cannot recommend this enough. In fact, all three beers I had last night at the Gin Mill; King Sue, Intergalactic Warrior, and Key Lime & Tangerine; were all fantastic. All highly recommended. I’ve had four different beers from Toppling Goliath so far and cannot say enough good things about them. (King Sue and Intergalactic Warrior last night, and Pseudo Sue before as well as a hop variant of Pseudo Sue from Tavour.)

My Untappd Rating: ****.50
Global Untappd Rating: 4.42 (as of 11.5.19)

November is rolling on, and I’m keeping pace so far. Getting a mile walk/run per day. Having (at least) one new beer each day. And getting one new blog post per day. So five days in and so far five days good. Only thing I didn’t keep up was on the 2nd I only 8.8K steps rather than my goal of 10K steps per day (but I think the first made up for it with 21K steps). So here’s to the next 25 days going as smoothly as the first 5!

Cheers everyone!

-B. Kline