Arctic Sunstone

Brewery: Amager/Three Floyds

Type: American Pale Ale

Alcohol: 6%

Country: Denmark/USA

So here is the final beer in the Amager Amerikaner collaboration series. Arctic Sunstone is an APA from the minds of Amager and those much lauded metal heads over in Munster, Three Floyds. The beer is named after the fabled sunstone that was supposed to help the viking to have navigated the seas. Supposedly it helped them get all the way over to my neck of the woods. Which maybe explains where brutal brewers like Three Floyds came from. I was so excited for this beer I even built it a little alter of bottle caps. It now stands atop the fallen caps of other titans of craft, it is prepared for the drinking.

Pours a beautiful medium orange color, very opaque, as in I can't read the text on the other side of the glass but when i hold it to the light it glows neon orange. Nice big fluffy white head, it dissolves fast but leaves a ton of foam stuck to the sides of the glass. The smell is heavenly, fully deserving of my bottle cap altar. Resinous pine and grapefruit combine with a sweet malt note to create an amazing perfume that needs to be bottled. Eau de APA, the new scent from Three Floyds and Amager. The taste follows along with the amazing smell. Beautiful balance between malt and hop. Sweet biscuity malt flavor melts directly into that coating of pine and grape/tropical fruit. Bit more resin in the taste then in the aroma. The malt does a good job of letting the hops sing in this baby. Bitterness in this pale is pretty mild, to me anyway. I think the sweetness does a lot to balance out the bite, but its still gonna make sure you know those hops are there. Medium mouthfeel, relatively dry and long lasting hoppy tropical bubblegum aftertaste.

Now while balanced this is still a hop lovers APA. That being said it is APA 101 for me. I love this kind of hop centric, yet still malty enough that it is not treading on IPA territory. Just like it says on the label, it is dangerously quaffable and does not drink at all like a 6% ABV beer. This is by far the easiest drinking of the series, but by no means does that make it boring. Its a beautifully balanced beer that rivals any American Pale Ale I have ever had. A good end to the series and a pleasure to drink. Now that I am done with this beer, I feel the need to go pillage a village!

P.S.

As this is a collaboration between brewers in the great nations of Denmark and America, I feel you should check out the review of this same beer on Danish blog stovt. Now this is the last in the Amager and America series, but I hope to keep the relationship between Rock on Beer and Stovt going in the future. Skål to us both.