Pencil & Spoon - THORNBRIDGE HALCYON IS FUCKING AWESOME!
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Excuse the tabloid hyperbole and screamy capital letters, but I don’t think enough people have said just how good Thornbridge Halcyon 2009 is yet (only Zak Avery, Hopzine, Reet Good Leeds, Real Ale Reviews 'an Innocent smoothie on acid', and The Ormskirk Baron [baron rating of 5/5]). It’s a beer blogger’s dream: limited release, once a year, hotly anticipated; green-hopped with new season UK Targets (forget the US C-hop, it’s all about the UK Ts on this display); a dangerously beautiful 7.7%; a sexy new label (featuring a sneaky peak of bust); a stream of updates - promises - from the brewery on its progress: we’re brewing it soon, it’s been brewed, it’s in the conditioning tank, it’ll be a few months yet, it’s almost ready, it’s tasting great, we’re almost there, bottling Halcyon soon, bottling Halcyon now, so close, just a little longer, it tastes amazing, it’s ready to go, YOU CAN BUY THEM NOW... it’s beergasm territory, get ‘em while they’re HOT.
Remember Fruit Salad sweets? That’s what it smells like first, then pineapple, then mango, then a little grassy and floral, then a tangy, pithy, resinous bitterness stomps on through. One line of the notes has both “Mmm” and “Yum” on. The hops are super fruity and unexpected; juicy and delicious. It could threaten to get a bit sweet but the bitterness rips through and it’s all backed up with a stiff malty backbone to keep it in shape. A knife-edge balance, perfectly executed.
It’s hyped-up and laden with heavy sacks of expectation, but the beer smashes through that (I imagine it does so with a look to the skies, an impassioned roar, a paw at the chest). Big green hops, super fruity, full-on bitterness, but always just lip-smackingly good. It’s up there with the best IPAs this year (and I’ve had some shit hot IPAs this year).
I’ve got a mixed 12-pack of this and St Petersburg (another great beer, deserving of its own upper case exclamation, no doubt – imagine you BBQ’d a bar of dark chocolate and then blitzed it up with some coffee, and loads of earthy hops, it’s real goood, in a dirrrty kind of way, like eating in bed) but I’m seriously tempted to go back to myBrewerytap and order some more (especially as they’re now selling Marble, too).
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