“Our annual release of Jumping the Shark is always super exciting here at Moon Dog! It’s our opportunity to make the biggest, most bad-ass, delicious beer we can think of. We jam in as much flavour as possible to create something really ridiculously special. This year we used more hops than you can shake a bine at! 20 varieties of hops from around to world added at 6 different points of the brewing process. This is a sweet, hoppy, boozy, resinous balltearer!!!!!”
Served in an IPA glass. It pours a burnt orange colour with a massive four finger crown. The head slowly reduced and settles to a thick overlay which weaves a healthy lace down the walls of the glass.
The nose is extremely sweet. Very fruit forward but not in the way of freshly cut fruit, it’s more like a blend of fermented stonefruits mango, paw paw and rockmelon. Lots of similarities to a boozy fruit cocktail. Plenty of pithy and slightly acidic pineapple juice, guava, blood orange, lychee, toffee apple and subtle hints of fennel. The malt is sticky, chewy and caramel based. Very unique…..so Moon Dog!
The flavour is much of the same. Big emphasis on the sticky and sweet fermented fruits along with an almighty kick from the 14.4% ABV. What’s good is it doesn’t overpower, allowing a bit of that hoppy bitterness to creep through the middle. Getting a kind of burnt orange note developing late as it all flows in to a sharp, bitter and boozy finish with good duration in the tail.
The mouth feel, although astringent and warm, is incredibly well tempered for a beer of its size. Chewy, sticky texture. Mild co2 and medium in weight.
Our only gripe with this beer? The green bottle! WTF?! Why do they leave the beer exposed to bring light struck? Any who, Moon Dog as they consistently do, have provided us all with another whacky and wonderful offering as part of their Jumping The Shark series. Not as good as previous releases but still a beer to savour….or even age if you possess the patience.