This is part two of our Tattered Flag and Hop Hedz Gear collaboration releases beer reviews. The release was three beers – Going Rogue, Flavor Guided Juice Missile, and Flavor Guided Juice Missile DDH with Guava. This is the second of the three beer reviews, the first we tackled was Going Rogue, a raspberry sour. This – (the regular version) Flavor Guided Juice Missile is a DIPA (Double / Imperial IPA). We will cover the DDH (Double Dry Hopped) with Guava version next time.

If interested in more information on Tattered Flag and Hop Hedz Gear’s can release, check out my review of the Going Rogue.

To watch the awesome video Bart did as part of Hop Hedz Gear and his work with the Tattered Flag guys, check that out here:

I also want to say thank you to Justin for dropping the 4-pack of beers off to me while we were chilling at Boneshire Brew Works the other day. Nothing beats fresh off the canning line; day of canning beers. One of my favorite aspects of helping the canning line is standing there tilting a few back while getting some work done.

Now that we got all the official and important information out of the way, lets get to the beer review.

Beer: Flavor Guided Juice Missile
Brewery: Tattered Flag
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double – New England
ABV: 8.1%
IBU: (None Listed)
Untappd Description: Double NEIPA brewed with a monster amount of wheat and oats hopped and Double dry hopped with Amarillo, Denali, and Cashmere Cryo hops for big notes of earthy berries up front complimented with a crisp melon and citrus finish.

Like a typical IPA from Tattered Flag, this is a bright, juicy, NE-IPA that is delicious and tasty.

Appearance is a good hazy, normal looking New England IPA (or IIPA / DIPA). Orange – yellow with a golden hue, hazy, thin white foamy head. Good carbonation, good texture, and good appearance.

Nose is nice and hoppy as well, just like a good IPA should always be. This has got a very powerful citrus punch to it, you get a bit of a cantaloupe and melon rind. A good New England IPA / DIPA always has that juicy, tasty, silky like smell to it, where you can taste the haze and the juice and the hops before you even sip it. Just making you want to take that first sip. Always love taking a good strong sniff of a NE-IPA before even sipping. Just like a roasty stout, you just know exactly what you’re in for as soon as you take a sniff of a NE-IPA.

And exactly how it smells, is exactly how it tastes. Juicy, hoppy, citrusy, notes of the cantaloupe, melon, and melon rind really light this up. Its strong too, tasting more like a 9.5%+ beer than an 8.1% ABV, but even still, 8.1% is good enough for most folks to get them in trouble after a few. The mouthfeel is spot on with this, slick, and easy sipping, light, but you get the weight of the ABV, a full bodied beer that feels right as you drink. This is a great example of the NE-IPA style, its a strong drink but good for the summer heat all at the same time, juicy and tasty and not holding anything back.

My Untappd Rating: ****.50
Global Untappd Rating: (none yet, first to drink it, as of 7.10.20) EDIT: 4.11 (as of 7.13.20)

Cheers everyone, make sure to check out the other parts of this review series. Hope you enjoy! And make sure to go and grab the beers at Tattered Flag. They won’t last long I’m sure!

-B. Kline

Tattered Flag and Hop Hedz Gear Beer Release:

• Going Rogue
• Flavor Guided Juice Missile
• Flavor Guided Juice Missile DDH with Guava

It’s not every day I get to review beers that aren’t even released yet, so this is a fun change of pace. Yesterday (Wednesday, 7.8.20) was my first day off work since starting back up, and my plan was to stop at Boneshire Brew Works for a beer or two (they had Rotunda’s Wootenberries sWheat Tart – which was actually the plan for today’s beer review) and then run my errands. I had the Rotunda sWheat Tart, then the Sly Fox and Stoudt’s Black Lager collaboration, and then Justin – the head brewer at Tattered Flag stopped out to join me at Boneshire Brew Works after he got done at work.

Needless to say, I never ran my errands.

Justin left around 8:45ish or so, and I ended up leaving a bit after around 9-930ish. After that, I went do D. Scott’s place to drink some of the new beers and hang out, we enjoyed the Going Rogue sour and the Flavor Guided Juice Missile (regular version). We watched the latest Halloween (from a few years back) and Friday the 13th, Part V.

Justin was telling me it was a long day of canning at Tattered Flag and doing the behind the scenes stuff for Bart’s Hop Hedz Gear promotion with the beers. Speaking of that promotion, you can watch their video here:

Bart does a great job of being entertaining and funny with his promotions, in-person and online. So always be sure to check him out and check out his store – Hop Hedz Gear.

So, this friday (tomorrow – 7.10.20) Tattered Flag is releasing three of those pictured; the ones done in promotion with Hop Hedz Gear. They are: Going Rogue (Sour Fruited), Flavor Guided Juice Missile (IPA) and Flavor Guided Juice Missile DDH w/Guava (Double Dry Hopped IPA). Mercenaries of Juice will get released the following friday (7.17.20).

Beer: Going Rogue
Brewery: Tattered Flag
Style: Sour – Fruited
ABV: 6%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Sour ale conditioned on raspberry puree, cinnamon, vanilla, and lactose.

Apologies for the bad picture above, but it was a long night and D. Scott’s basement (where his studio is set up and the TVs are) has some poor lighting when we’re not doing the streaming or podcasts or YouTube videos. But, anyway, this is a pretty reddish / pinkish to purplish sour. Big foamy head to it, lot of carbonation, with a nice dark sour look to it. Creamy appearance. Nice carbonation. Nice interspersed bubbles.

The nose for this is very heavy raspberry. With hints of the cinnamon sticking out as you take your first whiffs before sipping. You get a sense of the lactose, but nothing definable as far as that goes. The majority of the aroma on this bad boy is the raspberry, and its very powerful and upfront, like a good sour should be.

This is a delicious sour. Its tart, not extremely sour, but just downright tasty. The cinnamon hits a bit hard, so if you’re not into that ‘bite’ this might be off-putting, but its not major detraction or problem even for non-cinnamon fans I would think. The raspberry is incredibly tasty and the most potent part of this beer. This tastes and feels like a big strong beer, but its only 6% so it’s actually quite a bit lighter than you would think. The vanilla and lactose rounds it out nicely, smoothing the cinnamon edges, and making it a smoother and slicker beer. This will make for a wonderful four pack of sippers on the porch in this hot weather. You and a buddy could each crack two of these and enjoy a nice hour or so of socially distanced time together on the porch in the hot sun discussing if there will be a baseball season this year or not (and discuss how bad the Phils will do, at least we know they can’t lose more than sixty games this year). From appearance, to nose, to taste, this is a great beer.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global: I was the first to check it in, so there’s no other ratings yet.

Be sure to be on the lookout for this tomorrow at Tattered Flag. Released with the two Flavor Guided Juice Missiles as well. This will be a great release, and make sure to check out the video Bart produced for Hop Hedz Gear. This will definitely not be a release you will want to miss out on.

I want to thank Justin for the beers, was a nice surprise and drop, and was great hanging out with you at Boneshire. Always great to get beers fresh off the canning line. I will likely have the review of the Flavor Guided Juice Missile tomorrow to accompany this review. I was thinking of doing this as a multi-beer review, but I figured I’d split it up into a few beer reviews due to their release and all. So be on the lookout tomorrow for the Flavor Guided Missile review. Also, since I switched it up, be on the lookout in the near future for the Rotunda Wootenberries sWheat Tart review as well.

I do also want to point out that I edited the home page and start of the blog. So please be sure to check that out at HOME PAGE and let us know what you think of the changes. The top is now more navigable and there’s more easily accessible links, as well as links right to our social media accounts. Also, the font has been changed, and I hope its more readable and flowing. Not that there was anything wrong with our old font or that it was unreadable, but I just like this new font a bit more. But all the same, let us know what you think of the changes. Good or bad. Love to hear from you guys. Thanks!

Cheers all!

-B. Kline

Another style underrepresented here on the blog and in beer reviews in general is the pilsner. I’ve done a few reviews of them, but they’ve been exclusively in multiple beer review posts where I’m doing a flight or reviewing two or more beers at once. But I was gifted a can of this by J. Hoak after his Halloween party from when he and Tattered Flag did their collaboration with Levante Brewing Company. So thats’ gonna change now… its time to do a review of a pilsner!

Beer: Birra Di Levante
Brewery: Levante Brewing Company
Style: Pilsner – Other
ABV: 4.9%
IBU: 32
Untappd Write-Up: A fine Pils is crafted from water with terroir. West Chester provides our brewery with such a pure water source that we hardly manipulate our water profile to achieve the characteristics of a true Bohemian-style Pilsner, lagered and further clarified through filtration. True to classic style, Tettnang hops brighten this crisp golden-straw hue Pils with earthy aromatics of noble spice.

Levante Brewing Company is probably best known for Tickle Parts (IPA); which as I write this blog, I’m currently drinking a variant of it (Tickle Parts Passionfruit IPA). But this pilsner certainly deserves recognition and should be mentioned when discussing some great beers that Levante has made. Pilsners for a long time are one of my ‘weird’ categories of beers or styles of beers; where it can go either way with little wiggle room. Either pilsners have a weird taste to me and its just off putting and I can’t drink it, or their extremely good and I could down a six pack in no time flat.

Luckily, this one falls more on the “how many cans do I have in the fridge? …thats not enough!” side of things.

Appearance for this is crystal clear light straw. Similar to the Newfangled Brew Works Lager I reviewed yesterday; this is clear, crisp looking, with nice bubbles, and good lacing on the glass afterwards. Great carbonation coming out of the can.

Aroma is light beer fare, but with some earthy undertones to it. Once again, similar to the Lager and similar to lagers and pilsners in general, this just has that ‘beer’ smell to it. The stereotypical, prototypical, nondescript ‘beer’ smell one associates with beer, when ‘cracking open a cold one’ after a long day’s work. There is some spices that you can get a faint hint of, earthy herbal spices, but they are pretty faint and more of an undertone than something to stand out.

Taste is clean, crisp, clear, straight forward pilsner. Not too many frills or sillyness with this beer. Light and low in ABV at only 4.9%, this is what a simple clear crisp refreshing beer should taste like. This is easily crushable and would make for a wonderful fantastic six-pack beer for a game or mowing the yard. There is a nice hoppy taste to this that kicks this up a bit of a notch from your generic or average pilsner, or lager, or lite beer. Certainly over the corporate swill of Coors, Bud, Miller.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.64 (as of 11.18.19)

This passionfruit Tickle Parts is super good too, you can probably look for this to be the review tomorrow, so keep your antennas ready to check out the site for when it drops! Hopefully before work (makes it easier), so check around 10AM.

Fingers crossed.

Cheers!

-B. Kline