REVIEW: Terrapin Hopsecutioner IPA

Greetings Alehounds!

I love the holidays, and sharing good times and gastric excess with good friends and family from far and wide is one of my favorite parts.  This year, with the new baby in tow, we made Thanksgiving a whirlwind tour on four wheels, visiting my lovely wife's family in south Georgia, mine in Pennsylvania, and then back to our home in Maine.  I'll admit, that was a lot of driving, but it was a fun trip in beautiful weather, and as an added bonus I got to stop along the way and pick up some regional beers to bring back with me.  Now, with the holidays behind us, it's time for a few reviews!  Now, where did I put those tasting notes...
                                                                                                                         
Today we're reviewing Hopsecutioner India Pale Ale (IPA) from the Terrapin Brewery in Athens, GA.  One of the things I love about regional breweries is the variety of label artwork.  This one features a cartoonish critter reminiscent of a certain teenage mutant ninja variety wielding a headsman's axe--sorta jumped off the shelf at me!

For this tasting (as with many of the tastings I do) I used a Chimay goblet, which has a nice little raised emblem inside the bottom of the glass, which acts as a nucleation site for carbonation bubbles to form as the gas comes out of solution, with the result being a steady stream of bubbles coming up through the center of the liquid and releasing the beer's locked-in aroma.  If you've never tried beer out of one of these, I highly recommend it!

Appearance
In the glass, the beer was a light coppery-orange color, and a little hazy. There was about a finger's thickness worth of head, slightly off-white, which disappeared rather quickly and left a nice coat of lace on the glass and a thin foam from the constant bubbles coming up in the center. There was quite a bit of haze in the beer too.

Smell
Not strong at all. I had to really struggle to find any hops aroma at all, which surprised me given to the hops content of a typical IPA and the purpose of my special glass. Oh well. There was a lot more malt aroma than I would expect in an IPA, with bread caramel dominating and a hint of toffee.

Taste
Found the hops, sorta. Floral and grassy with a dull lingering bitterness after swallowing. Pretty sweet--pale malts and caramel with some honey in the background. The taste experience doesn't seem to match the nose very well at all, which is unfortunate since smell plays a huge part in how things taste. The sweetness does seem to hide the 7.3% ABV pretty well.

Mouthfeel
Medium body with low to medium carbonation. Creamy and comfortable, it goes down smooth without a scratch in the throat.

Overall
As a beer--not too bad. As an IPA--a little disappointing. Middle of the road at best. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover; nor, apparently, should you judge a beer by its label. Based on the name and the label art, I expected a slightly whimsical yet sharp IPA that assails the tastebuds like a big burly man with an axe, but sadly, this was not so. They could have put a lot more hops in the aroma, and sharpened the hop bite in the flavor. While the caramel sweetness does a lot to mask the alcohol, the lack of balancing hops results in a beer that reminds me more of a extra light-ish ESB than an IPA. As for the nose not matching the taste, sometimes it's fun and instructive to trick your senses this way, but I don't generally find it useful with a beer, especially when that beer fails to match the profile typical of its purported type.

I've read good things about the Terrapin Brewery, and Hopsecutioner IPA in particular, so I'm thinking perhaps the beer I tasted was past its peak of freshness when I got around to trying it, and unfortunately I didn't check for a date on the label. It's also possible that it lost some of its proper character due to being transported for several days without refrigeration, although it was mighty cold in the back of my truck by the time we got back to Maine! I've found, too, that southern-fried brews sometimes tend to be lighter on the senses than their northern counterparts, which sorta makes sense because of the warmer weather. Still, to this northerner, Hopsecutioner seemed like it would be more aptly named as a lawnmower beer.

All this being said, I will definitely try Terrapin Hopsecutioner again next time I visit my in-laws!

Tune in next time for my review of Terrapin Rye Pale Ale.