Heady Topper

Heady Topper | ABV 8%

BJCP Style: Double IPA

CraftBeer.com Style: Imperial IPA

CraftBeer.com Sensory Style: Hoppy & Bitter

Hops: Proprietary blend of six hops

Malts: Proprietary

Brewery: The Alchemist

City: Stowe, VT

Beer Review

Appearance: Clear, light amber (unfiltered) with fluffy white head, good retention

Aroma: Pine, citrus & tropical fruit and woody/musty.

Flavor & Aftertaste: Alcohol noticeable. Citrus & resinous pine prominent with spicy notes mixed in. Aggressive bitterness on a low to moderate sweet malt backbone.

Palate: Highly astringent with a lengthy dry finish. Bitterness builds and lingers well into the finish.

Do you have a Bucket List of beers you’d like to try? I technically don’t have a formal list, but there are some beers out there I’d love to try at some point. High on that list is The Alchemist’s Heady Topper. It’s definitely a hype beer, one of those coveted beers that people stand in line at the brewery to get. Considering The Alchemist is out of Vermont (I rarely travel to that area of the country) and its not distributed down in Georgia, the odds of me getting to try it were pretty slim. As my good fortune would have it, I am active on Beer Advocate and BA buddy saw a post about me hoping to try it some day and contact me about sending me a can. I was blown away and offered a trade, but he insisted that I didn’t have to send him anything, he’s just happy to send me some. Sure enough, a few days later a package arrived with it and a can of Bearded Iris Attention Please DIPA. Wow, amazingly generous. Needless to say, I still plan to return the favor with some interesting local product. Let’s take a look at Heady Topper.

John Kimmich keeps his Heady Topper recipe close to the vest, but a little digging reveals it utilizes over six different hops. With that many hop varieties involved, it’s tough for one to really stand out. That being said, you will experience layers of hops aroma and flavors. Some are quite subtle, others very prominent. I believe this is what makes it such a popular beer. There are a number of beers out in the market place today that utilize multiple hops varieties, but this was among the first. Upon opening the can, the pine aroma will be the first thing you notice, followed by tropical fruit, citrus fruit, and a woody/must note (some refer to it as dank). Dankness is not one of my personal favorite beer aromas, but a lot of people like that. Something you’ll appreciate about this DIPA is that it is not too heavy. In today’s market place, the overuse of adjuncts to boost the mouth-feel of many IPA’s causes the beer make you feel full sooner.

What’s my final take? I’m not a big drinker of DIPA. I prefer something more sessionable, less bitter and less overwhelming. That being said, if I were a big fan of DIPA, this would definitely be one of my favorites. While the malt bill is simple, the layered hops characteristics make this a delight to the senses. It’s easy to see why this is a craft beer drinker favorite.

Let Us Drink Beer

Thanks for reading, until next time…Let Us Drink Beer!

Remember, always drink responsibly!

Other Let Us Drink Beer Reviews:

• Beer Review: Galactic Space Circus (Creature Comforts Brewing Co.)
• Beer Review: Fast Fjord Norwegian IPA (Gate City Brewing)
• Variant Brewing Company – Roswell, GA
• Beer Review: ETA IPA (Wild Leap Brew Co.)
• Beer Review: Koko Buni (Creature Comforts)

Fast Fjord Norwegian IPA | ABV 6.3%

BJCP Style: Specialty IPA

Hops: Idaho Gem, Citra, Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin, & Mosaic

Malts: Unknown

Brewery: Gate City Brewing Company

City: Roswell, GA – 43 MAGNOLIA STREET

Kveik “Ka-Wike” has become a popular yeast strain craft brewers have embraced over the last couple of years. The primary advantage to it for brewing is that it can speed up fermentation time, allowing a brewer to produce a finished beer several days sooner than average, without producing unwanted off flavors. To the average craft beer drinker, you’re not going to really note the difference in a beer produced with Kveik versus one using some other ale yeast. That being said, breweries are producing some unique, enjoyable beers with this crazy yeast strain. Locally, I have found Akademia Brewing Company’s Skal Norwegian Wheat Ale to be one of my favorites. It is a fantastic summertime ale, light bodied and exhibiting various floral and fruit-like aromas and flavors. This past fall I discovered Gate City Brewing out of Roswell, GA sporting a Norwegian IPA that utilized Kveik in a tap room only release. After sampling it, I immediately hoped they would can it for release. Wish granted! Back in late March, Gate City released to distribution Fast Fjord Norwegian IPA. Naturally, I had to snag some for a review.

 

To enjoy a beer like Fast Fjord, I definitely recommend pouring it into a Tulip or Snifter style glass. That will allow you to really enjoy all the competing hops aromas as you drink your way down to the bottom of the glass. The beer pours to a hazy amber color and develops a nice, frothy white head. With a very generous dose of five different hops, you get a plethora of citrus and tropical fruit aromas and flavors. If you detect some pineapple or stone fruit-like aromas, those are most likely from the Kveik. If you want to compare it to a New England style IPA, this beer has virtually no bitterness either. It has a medium body to it, a nice prickly bite from the carbonation and a finish that is relatively dry and satisfying.

Gate City Brewing Company is one of two craft breweries located in the Historic Roswell Downtown District. The other Variant Brewing Company. Both are located within easy walking distance of each other, along with multiple restaurants and bars, which makes it a great area to spend and evening or two socializing with friends and family. Some of Gate City Brewing’s more popular offerings include Awe Juice IPA (American), Copperhead American Amber Ale, OTP Imperial IPA, Terminus Baltic Porter, Citras Maximus IPL, and Ex Pat Munich Dunkel. They also have a solid Sour Beer and Barrel Aged Beer program.

Thanks for reading and until next time…Let Us Drink Beer!

As always, please drink responsibly.

Variant Brewing is located about 20 miles north of downtown Atlanta, just outside the perimeter (OTP as the locals say) in the heart of the Roswell Historical District. Opened in late 2017, it has quickly become one of the more popular craft beer breweries in the area, which is remarkable both considering its short tenure and the fact that their beers are not in distribution. Nationally syndicated Beer Guys Radio broadcasts out of Atlanta and annually present their Reader’s Choice Awards. This year, Variant Brewing Company was selected as Best Georgia Brewery/Brewpub. On any given day they are open, you will find sixteen or so beers on tap; five year round, nine seasonal, and a couple of variants. The current year round beers are Lumen Helles, Raspberry Lemon Gose, Cashmere Double New England IPA, Norcross St. IPA, and Dark Alchemy Oatmeal Stout. Seasonals will include everything from English Barleywine, Imperial Stout, and fruited Gose to Czech and Vienna Lager.

Variant’s facility is quite different than many breweries – warm and inviting. Upon entering you will quickly note the high ceilings, polished concrete floors and wood accents throughout the industrial, warehouse-like interior. Along one wall is a lengthy, wood top bar with plenty of seating. All through the main room is plenty of table top seating. All the seating has backs, which is always a plus. There is an outdoor patio with tables and umbrellas to keep the sun off during the hotter Georgia months. My favorite feature, besides the beers of course, is the amount of natural light that reaches the interior through the large windows throughout the building and what the architects describe as celestory windows in the ceiling . We’ve all been to those cozy, dark taprooms, which certainly have their charms; but I love a taproom that allows plenty of natural light to filter in to provide a nice bright, cheery atmosphere. Variant has this in spades. Because it is in the heart of the Roswell Historic District, parking can be a bit of challenge; however, you park less than a half block away at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center and make the short stroll over to the brewery.

Then there is the beer. I tend to gravitate toward the lagers, stouts and porters; but their most popular offerings have been variations on fruited gose. Splodey Fruited Gose has been by far their most popular. There are multiple variations on this beer infused with strawberry, blueberry, rhubarb, and cherries. Among the popular offerings are Cashmere, an exceptional 8% ABV Double New England IPA with, you guessed it, Cashmere hops. Canton Street IPA, a 6.5% ABV American IPA that is one my favorites. It is brewed with Cascade and Mosaic hops giving it nice citrus and tropical fruit notes and a moderate bitterness that does not linger. Another wildly popular offering is Good S’Morning Imperial Stout. This delicious 10% ABV stout is made with lactose, smores coffee beans, and cacao nibs; making it a great option for the occasional breakfast stout.

Knowing Variant makes some wonderful IPAs, Stouts and Goses, I decided to test out their prowess in lager making. In my book, how well a brewery does lager determines just how good the brewery is overall. First up is Lumen (4.2% ABV). This lager was an enjoyable beer; but missed the mark a bit for Helles. It has a nice medium body to it; but head retention was short to moderate. Hops aroma and flavors presented spicy/herbal German noble hops and a grainy malt sweetness; but its bitterness leaned more toward the moderate side than the restrained level you expect from Helles. They could call this more of German Pils than a Helles; but it was satisfying none the less.

Next up was Hand Hug Czech Pilsner (4.2% ABV). This is a seasonal offering, but should be a year round one. Variant was on point with this Czech style pilsner. It has a clean lager profile that allows the spicy/herbal notes of Saaz hops to shine. My only criticism of it, and it is a very minor one at that, is the relatively short head retention; however, it can be hard to judge most of the time due to the manner in which most bar staff pour beers. (Side note: properly poured beer is a quirky pet peeve of mine. The head on a beer is part of the experience and serves some practical functions such as releasing carbonation and enhancing the aromatics from the beer. It has been my experience that few bar staff give you a properly poured beer with a head on it). Most bar staff try to fill the glass too close to the rim, rather than pour to produce a proper head, so it can make judging head retention difficult. I attribute this to not wanting customers to feel like they got a short pour because of head foam. A proper pour of most styles will always have a nice head on it. At any rate, Hand Hug produces a thin, white fluffy head exhibiting a short to moderate length head retention. I would like to see a bit lengthier retention on it; but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the beer itself. It has a restrained bitterness and finishes crisp and clean. Hand Hug is a simple, enjoyable drinking beer in the Czech style.

Variant’s Vienna Lager is their best lager to date, in my opinion. This style is always interesting to me from a historical stand point. If you want to read more, check out my piece Vienna Lager – A Tale of Divergent Styles. If you’ll humor me for minute, let me expound a bit. This beer style almost disappeared, even in its country of origin Austria. Austrian brewer Anton Dreher invented this “pale” lager in 1841 and it quickly became a hit. Austrian immigrants to Mexico in the 1860’s brought their brewing techniques and continued the Vienna Lager tradition via beers like Victoria and Dos Equis Ambar; however, many of the Mexican versions have diverged from the original brew by Anton Dreher by adding other adjunct products and darkening the color. By the early 1900’s, Vienna Lager’s popularity was already being supplanted by Pilsner and Helles. World War I almost finished it off in its home country. But the style lived on in Mexico and has experienced a bit of a resurgence via the craft beer industry in the United States. Today there has been a bit of a tug of war over what defines Vienna Lager. Is it the historical version, a lighter colored lager or a slightly darker colored one? Most modern versions we are familiar with, Great Lakes Brewing Co. Eliot Ness and Devils Backbone, for example, either don’t use Vienna Malt or are bit more dark than the original because of small amounts of dark specialty malts added to them. I’ve had some great communications with K.C. Bier Co. founder Steve Holle, whom is considered well versed on Vienna Lager, and he believes the historical style, a lighter colored beer should define it; thus their Festbier represents the closest approximation I am aware of. So when I am reviewing Vienna Lagers, I am looking for something close to the authentic style. That doesn’t mean other representations are bad beers; quite the contrary, most of these are fantastic and are some of my favorites. I am just very interested in trying to preserve the historic style.

Enough of the history lesson, back to Variant’s version. I asked Owner and Brewmaster of Variant Matt Curling what he was targeting for his Vienna Lager. He stated he was wanting to make one with both historical and modern characteristics. Checking in at a 5.5% ABV, this lager is made with over 90% Vienna malt, with some Munich and Honey malt added, giving it a gold color with an orange tint. Malt forward, you will find hints of bread and caramel in the aroma. Flavors are bready with caramel and faint sweet honey-like. Fuggle hops is used for bittering and aroma, which give a bitterness that is very mild. The Fuggle hops is a different spin that I have never had in a Vienna Lager and it works well. The beer has nice body to it and is malt forward with enough bitterness to provide some balance without being harsh. All in all, a fine Vienna Lager style beer.

The last beer I sampled was Dark Alchemy, a 5.2% Oatmeal Stout. This has been a very popular offering at the brewery. It is jet black and produces a frothy tan head with moderate retention. Made with flaked oats, this stout is full bodied with coffee, toffee, dark roasted malt and cocoa notes. Drinkable all year, but particularly satisfying in the winter months. The brewery has used it to make several variants including Coffee Dark Alchemy, Nitro Dark Alchemy and Snickerdoodle Dark Alchemy.

In less than three years, Variant Brewing Company has vaulted to the list of top craft beer breweries in the Atlanta area. If your in ever in the Atlanta area near Dunwoody, Sandy Springs or Apharetta, it is well worth the short trip over to Roswell to check them out. There is a little something for everyone there and a friendly, inviting atmosphere.

Thanks for reading and until next time…Let Us Drink Beer!

And remember to drink responsibly!

(Editorial Note: This article first appeared on the blog LetUsDrinkBeer.blog where I contribute as a writer. They are a Georgia based beer blog. I have written a few articles for them, this one included. You can read the original copy on their blog here: Let Us Drink Beer – Beer Review: Haze. It was published on January 18th, 2020. I have left this article fully intact, outside of providing a few links, this editorial note, and correcting a spelling mistake.)

First off, let me first say – sorry – that its been a while. We, The Beer Thrillers, have been quite busy lately. We did a brewery tour and visit of Mellow Mink Brewing Co., and have been working on a big article for them, so that’s taken most of our time. (I will be posting it here as well to get as many people to be able to see it.) But, I did want to get a new beer review up for you guys down south, and decided what better beer to do – than the one I had on New Years Eve night (technically Day by that point).

Tree House Brewing has a cache name value to it by this point. Even though they don’t distribute, and even though they are far north, they are still known America-wide and even internationally. They are regularly touted as one of the Top 10 craft breweries in America, and widely considered one of the best .

I had the lucky opportunity to get a couple of these great beers brought down for me from a friend who was up north visiting who stopped in at the brewery. I have already reviewed on my blog – Sap and Autumn, and will soon be reviewing Julius and Doppelganger as well. So please be sure to check those out, I think you’ll enjoy those reviews if you enjoy this one.

So let’s jump into this tasty beer, and believe me, its certainly tasty!

Beer: Haze
Brewery: Tree House Brewing Company
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double
ABV: 8.2%
IBU: 90
Untappd Write-Up: Our Double IPA! We smell a ton of peach on the nose, with complimentary notes of orange and passionfruit. The flavor is similar with a blast of citrus fruit & peach quickly followed by a bounty of tropical fruit. A lingering and pleasant saturated hop oil finish awaits. . . . A real juice bomb of a beer!

Now there’s a key thing to remember about Tree House and this beer in particular… these were created and crafted before there was a thing called “New England IPA”…. this is the forerunner, essentially the child of New England IPAs. The spirit animal of NE-IPAs, the progeny, etc, etc.

So you could consider these NE-IPAs but they won’t be listed as that. Tree House, Trillium, and others up north created the style, the rest of the world ran havoc with it.

Breaking this down, lets start with the color. Its a golden hue. Like very bright orange juice. There’s a good head to it with great retention and it leaves wonderful lacing on the glass. Its unfiltered, and to invoke its namesake its certainly hazy.

Smell is delicious hop aroma through and through. Upfront very peach hop forward followed by all the tropical fruity hop notes you expect from this. This is an explosion of aroma as soon as the can is cracked, filling the room with its hop presence.

By this point, after pouring it, seeing it, smelling it, its time to taste it before you drool too much. This is just one fantastic beer. Well crafted, tasty, delicious, mouth watering good, and so simple to drink. This is a very easy drinkable beer, that if your not careful you’re finishing in no time. And at the 8.2% ABV it’ll hit you. This is typical for NE-IPAs, very smooth, very crushable (despite ABV), juicy, filled with fruity hop notes that play across your tongue. The surprising and unique thing to this one, as opposed to Julius, or Sap, or Doppelganger, is there’s a bitterness at the end. After all the juicyness, the fruity hop-ness, there’s an underlying hop bitterness, to let you remember that “oh yea, I’m drinking an IPA”. And it works so beautifully and perfectly.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.4.9 (as of 1.14.20)

Sorry for the delay in reviews, but with the new year came a lot of new things, and life’s been hectic, not just for the blog, but for myself. Doing podcasts – which we just wrapped up LOST Seasons 1 and 2 and The Mandalorian & Rise of Skywalker.

As always, please be sure to check out our Facebook page – The Beer Thrillers on Facebook – and our Twitter page – The Beer Thrillers on Twitter. Make sure to follow and like us.

Also, please be sure to check out our blog and click the follow, subscribe, and all of that good stuff. Plenty of great articles coming out soon! As always, cheers everyone!

-B. Kline