“Bumped, bruised and battered, the race for Lupulin powder is not one for the faint-hearted. A single harvest once a year, sending brewers into a hop hash feeding frenzy – and for good reason! As dangerously aromatic as it is addictive, you’d sell the house with nan in it just to get your hands on a beer with hash in it. But we’ve gotcha covered this time. Hop Hash XPA, displaying strong stone fruit characters with a bitter finish, tell nan it was a close one.”
Served in an IPA glass. Very good looking beer – crystal clear golden amber with hyper active co2 streaming up to form the thumb of foamy white head. Good retention and good lace work on the glass.
The nose offers fresh piney hops, citrus, mango, unripened rockmelon, subtle aniseed spice, yellow grapefruit and a clean biscuity malt at the base. We’d love to know the bottling date because this smells as fresh as a daisy. Really digging this aroma.
The flavour follows through with punchy notes of fresh green herbs, citrus, pine needles and grapefruit on the fore. Quite an emphasis on the herbal aspect as it takes on much more of a grassy character midway. A firm citrus acidity forms late before it rounds off on a dry and super bitter finish.
Crisp, sharp and dry in texture, not thin but definitely lean and light bodied. Aggressive 50 IBUs making it slightly tough to session on.
We don’t usually like to compare beers to others but this has a lot of similarities to Sierra’s Hop Hunter. The use of hop powder is obvious but the superb clarity, the fresh piney and citrusy nose and the clean and crisp palate are all here. Just not as refined as the Hop Hunter though. Still, a decent offering from 4 Pines.