Perennial Barrels and Mash favorite Roughtail Adaption IPA was released on Friday. We went to the release and it was a very quick and orderly, I got my beer picked up and paid for in under 30 minutes. Myself and a bunch of other beer dorks were happy to cut out of work a tad early to grab our no limit allotments of Adaption Batch 7. This batch contains Comet, Citra and Mosaic hops, pretty standard for the series, but also includes lupulin powder and white wheat in the mash to mix it up a bit. There were 200+ cases up for grabs, with a small amount going out for distribution for those that couldn’t make it to the brewery this weekend.
Company: Roughtail Brewing Co.
Location: Midwest City, OK
ABV: 6.4%
IBUs: 37
Style/Description: American Style IPA
Price: $15 per four pack
Appearance: Pours a cloudy light copper, with a moderate head and sticky persistent lace.
Nose: Lightly resinous hop aroma, with sweet orange citrus. Some lemon tang.
Taste: Sweet and fruit juicy, as we’ve come to expect from the Mosaic hops used in the Adaption series. Plenty of orange and hint of tart grapefruit, and a little bit of bitter pith flavor in there as well. Tropicals are present too, with pineapple, mango and peach sweetness blunting much of the pine of the hop bitterness. The body is much lighter than the previous Adaptions, with a light carb and a softer, velvety mouthfeel. Roughtail revealed that there is white wheat in the mash bill, so that could account for some of that creaminess.
Finish: Nice clean finish, some hop flavor lingers, but dissipates quickly.
Overall: Nice beer, I always look forward to the new Adaption batches, and here we are at Batch 7. This one is good, but seems to be lacking a bit of the magic of earlier releases. It’s definitely lighter in body and just doesn’t have as much flavor as the previous releases. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh, and judging this very good beer by the standards of amazing beers in the series that have come before it. Many of those beers got 4s, 4.5s or 5s, and this batch is almost there. I’m going to call it a 3.75 that gets rounded up to a 4. Thanks as always, Roughtail.
Rating: 4/5