Two wild brand new IPAs from Stone in as many posts? I must be doing something right. Today's beer, much like the last Stone collaboration beer I had (the fabulous and bizarre Dayman Coffee IPA), is borne of homebrewers. A couple of dudes, Robert Masterson and Ryan Reschan, won Stone's recent American Homebrewers Association contest and won the right to have their beer brewed at Stone with a little help from Paul Sangster and Guy Shobe of Rip Current Brewing. That's a pretty rad prize if I do say so myself. So a big west coast IPA brewed with an irresponsible amount of hops and hearty additions of toasted coconut? Sounds awesome. To the beer!
R&R pours a lovely shade of bright vibrant gold with a touch of a coppery orange hue. The head on this beer is quite impressive. Tall, frothy, rocky, and awfully resilient. It leaves rings of lacing all the way down the glass.
The aromas here are downright impressive. It begins with an assertive, resiny, piney character but as it warms more and more tropical fruit complexity comes to the forefront. Notes of pineapple, grapefruit, mango, apricot, lemon are joined by a very subtle coconut addition and a toasty malt sweetness.
R&R kicks off with a punchy robust bitterness that gives way to an abundance of citrusy fruit flavors of grapefruit, lemon, tangerine, apricot, and pear. A sweet honey malt flavor lends a creamy medium body. It finishes with a bitterness, that while strong does not ever really overpower.
This is a great IPA. Coming from Stone, that isn't really a shock. The tropical fruit complexity is pretty splendid. However, I must agree with the craft beer Twitter consensus here, where's the coconut? I don't know if it plays such a complimentary role that it melds with all of the other fruitiness or if it's just covered up by the generous hop bill or what. Whatever the case might be, at the end of the day we're left with a pretty terrific coconut IPA that doesn't really taste all that much of coconut. Still absolutely worth your time.
HD
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