Calcutta 420 India Pale Ale

22oz Bomber bottle. Sampled on a lazy Saturday evening.

Knowing that I've generally had piss-poor luck with Coast Range beers in the past, just exactly why did I pick up this offering at BevMo two days ago? Good question, to which I have no good answer to. But to be honest, after sampling this, I really expected much worse from this offering.

A classic case of when hops can be used to hide and/or partially mask other flavor faults in a beer. Like I've mentioned with some of the other Coast Range beers, this beer has some serious astrigency issues, steming from the use of generally cheap-ass high-IBU hops. Thus, no small amount of rawness in the mouthfeel.

But with the increased hop-load, this beer actually starts to approach a semblence of nomality and balance, all-told. Enough to put this beer into the upper ranking brackets, IPA-wise? Hardly. But even still, enough to keep this beer from finding an early down-the-drain grave.

Overall, considering my very low expectations of this beers, and the price I paid for this, this was not a bad deal, all-told. A basically workable IPA, me'thinks.
//TB