Beer Review: Green Flash Palate Wrecker

Brewery: Green Flash
Beer: Palate Wrecker
Style: Double IPA
Alcohol by Volume: 9.5%

Let me start off by saying that this is a powerful well named beer best for serious, or at least experienced, hop heads. Or very very adventurous novices, but don’t recommend this to a bud light drinker unless you want them to hate craft beer forever.

Color comes out a great amber-brown with a solid finger of solid head. This is, in my opinion a great looking beer, such a nice hue to the color.

The bountiful aroma starts while pouring. Very powerful smell with lots of citrus and pine. It’s a tremendous hop presence, but doesn’t smell overwhelmingly bitter.

It’s a whammy, err I suppose a wrecker, of a taste. It kinda makes me go cross eyed, in a good way… if that’s possible. Again faced with a major hop presence, but still not overly bitter like I would expect with this level of hops. It’s a very complex taste, bits of fruit here and there, citrus, pine, and some minor background malt presence of sweet sugary candy. It’s a real 1 2 punch of complex hop flavors and malty sweetness.

The mouth feel is pretty smooth with a medium body and and slight carbonation.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s strong? 9.5% of barely noticeable alcohol, barely noticeable until it’s on top of you. I really like this beer (which a friend scored for me at Jungle Jims if you’re looking for it) but wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. This gets a 4/5 from me, if it was slightly less aggressive I might bump it up some more… but then it wouldn’t be as special or interesting.