Wild Beer Fresh

Brewery: Wild Beer

Type: IPA

Alcohol: 5.5%

Country: England

I went to brewdog's bottle shop, bottledog (really inventive you guys), and asked for some local recommendations. Right off the bat I was told fresh from Wild Beer Co. was a very nice hoppy pale ale. Now I have had some Wild Beer co. brews via ales by mail before to varying degrees of success. Though since they don't have distribution in Denmark I thought why not.

The gimmick in fresh is that the hops change every so often depending on the season and what they source from both the northern and Southern Hemisphere. A neat little sales pitch. My bottle happened to be Columbus, Sorachi Ace, and Amarillo. Sorachi Ace being one of my least favorite hops, I got a bit leery, but the ole college try and all that. Pours out a thick orangish color. Since I am in England lets call that color orange marmalade. Head is a decent size, white, and disappears rapidly in my new brewdog teku I bought to replace the one destroyed in the great glass catastrophe of '14. The smell leaves a tad to be desired in the ole nostril tickling department. Certainly traces of Amarillo and it's flowery citrus, Columbus and it's dank pine, and Sorachi Ace and it's...sorachiness, but I expected more aroma to pop. The taste is the same with hints and shadows of these very distinct hops. I mean these are the kind of hops that usually kick your teeth in with their flavors. I shouldn't need Sherlock Holmes to help me solve the flavor mystery of a beer with Sorachi, Amarillo, and Columbus. Super low mouthfeel and high carbonation only intensify the void left by big hop flavor. Oh and like the person who is drinking it and thinking of his wasted four quid, it's bitter as hell.

For a beer called fresh, it is anything but fresh. Determined to find the meaning of this I looked for a best by or bottling date. After determining a small dark splotch on the glass to be some form of alphanumeric text, I rushed the bottle to Oxford to be put under an electron microscope so the secret of the bottling date could be revealed. Low and behold this beer was produced in mid August of last year! The guy at the shop said it is one of their freshest hoppy beers. BOLLOCKS!!!! What a right load of shite. Arse...knob...twat...ok I'm done. No wonder this thing drinks like it was left over from the Victorian period, it basically is! Seriously this review is now turning into a rant on shop workers who don't keep an eye on their old beers and try to pass them off as the freshest thing since Pelletized hops. I expected more from a shop that even refrigerates their stock. Such care is almost un-heard of in most European bottle shops, and then to have the beer still be old as shit. Anyway I am going to put away my soap box now, and instead put on my apology hat to wild beer. I bet this beer was nice back in the day when it was first delivered to bottle dog from the horse and carriage that brought it there. For now though I can only give it a super meh score of six caps because it's lack of fresh hops flavor in a beer with fresh in the title.