Amager Batch 1000
Brewery: Amager Bryghus
Type: IPA
Alcohol: 6.5%
Country: Denmark
What can I say about Amager, they are one of my favorite breweries, not just in Denmark, but anywhere. They make amazing beers. Amazing enough that I can overlook some of the weird star wars and German sex toy related hijinks that go on out there in Tårnby (lookin at you lustfinger). Well now they have reached a brewing milestone of sorts. One thousand batches brewed. To celebrate they made a beer appropriately called simply "Batch 1000". An IPA (what else) that says thank you to the fans and loyal customers, and also shows off what Amager does best. Which if you don't know is they put hops in things...lots and lots and lots of hops. This IPA is a fan service to all those like myself that fell in love with the brewery through their wide range of outstanding humulous concoctions.
The beer pours a lightish orange or a darkish yellow, lets call it singed satsuma. The color is impressively dark considering the malt bill is exceedingly simple with the color coming mostly from some munich. Has a big fluffy white head that refuses to disappear, which was nice for the photo taking since I had to dick around forever trying to get a decent shot of the shiny foil label. Hey it still had a head even after I threw my expensive camera to the side and took the picture with my phone. Enough behind the curtain though, let's get into what you really care about, the juicy details of this herald of hops. The smell defies adjectives to describe how amazingly fragrant these hops are. This is fresh beer at it's finest, bottled earlier this month none of the aroma magic has had time to dissipate. The double dry hop advertised on the side of the bottle seems to have done it's job. There is peachy, pineapple and other such distinct fruit tones as well as sharper citrusy elements all presented in front of a backdrop of super hop dank. Part of that dank coming courtesy of the perverse and ultra distinct sorachi ace. Very complex smell where no one hop really overpowers but they all seem to shine together.
The taste is a rush of hop flavor and bitterness that has my tongue falling out and my eyes popping like a tex avery wolf. In fact every sip I take I find it more difficult to not grab the comically large wooden mallet I have next to me and bashing myself in the head. I pick up tons of sorachi in the taste, but I am also really sensitive to that particular hop. I imagine the sorachi in this beer as a man in a trench coat waiting until I am enjoying some other fruity flavor before running up and throwing open his coat for me to stare in horror at his...ok well you get the picture. Sorachi is not even too distracting for me here. I get lots of fruit as well, pineapple and a touch of mango, with some orange flavors and a good deal of pine before the blast of bitterness. The bitterness will not let you forget the sacrifice of the kilo upon kilo of green soldiers that went into this beer. I can imagine the IBUs must be in the higher end of the range. The bitterness is bracing but not detracting from the flavor overall. The body is good and light and the malt has absolutely nothing to do with this. Hell there might not even by malt in this beer. You would have to wait a millennia to find out, which I assume is the half-life of a beer this hoppy. The flavor and the balance and everything are amazing here. I'll just get it out of the way and say that this is something like my perfect IPA. Even with the sorachi ace, which normally really brings a beer to a screeching halt for me, it plays nice with the other hops here and adds bits of flair to an otherwise well known cast of characters. This beer rivals and even surpassed some of those "holy hop" mega beers from the US. Move over heady, look out pliny, Europe finally has a hoppy beer to be envied the world over. A huge thanks to Amager for making this beer for the people and here's looking forward to batch 2000. Perfect ten out of ten.
