Recently I contacted Jolanda at Drinks & Gifts to see what BrewDog beers she had available. It turned out she had a 4 pack of single hop India Pale Ales called IPA is Dead. Of course, I felt obliged to try them and here are my findings.

First of all, IPA. India Pale Ale. It is called that because regular beer didn’t last long enough to be sailed to England’s colony in India, and they had to find a way to adjust the brew to last months in a ship. They adjusted the ABV slightly upward and added a lot more hops to make it last and the style of beer kind of took of. It still is available while the empire has been in decline for a long time.

Nelson Sauvin
The first beer is very fruity to start with, almost tropical. Slightly more sour scents after a minute with a very clear hoppy influence. Slightly mineral and quite a bit of cereal. The flavour is a bit more warming and full. Sickly sweet fruit and a slight lack of crispness. Cherries?

Soraci Ace
A lot more crisp with apple and pear scents. Less in acidity and cereal. It has a bit of a Sauvignon Blanc feeling to it with a bit of a burnt scent. The taste is quite contrary to what I expected with a viscous taste. A lot sweeter than the scent made me expect.

Citra
A lot lighter in colour is the first thing that stand out to me. The previous two were almost Irn Bru coloured. The sweetness of this one is more of a doughy kind with a hint of mango. Not as sweet though. A slight bitter hint that I expected with hoppy beers. The flavour is full and long with a light sweetness. More beery…

Bramling X
Bitter and sweet. Beer. This one smells like it really is a factor that holds the other ones together. It has the fruityness of the Soraci Ace and the Nelson Sauvin with the bitter of the Citra. It adds its own hoppyness to get even better. Lots of barley! The flavours continues this with a slight stickyness and very high quality barley.

After I had all four of them over a course of 6 hours, I still felt slightly buzzy, but in a good way. The order I picked at random kept giving me better beers, which I kind of liked. The one that most surprised me was the Soraci Ace, since the nose and the flavour were a bit contradictory at first. Bramling X is just a kick-ass beer, but I think I prefer the combined hops to the sinlge hop varieties.