The beers of Iwakuni: Nanto Brewery IPA

I would like to appologize for the lack of original content this blog is going to have description wise. This is going to be a hammered pair in terms of reviews. Please refer to the Nanto brewery Black Lager for all of the information I have on the brewery and where I got this beer. According to the interweb, Nanto's IPA is much better. The black lager wasn't bad, so I have high hopes for the IPA.

This has the same heavy shoulder longneck bottle with pulltab cap.The design is the same as the Black lager, except it's an aqua color. The bottle says: "Rich citrus fragrance and the bitter taste of hops". Other than that, it is exactly the same as the other. 5% abv. I will be using the dry beer glass from my Japanese set. let's pull that tab and see that head.

Nose from the bottle is faint, but I would say it's a sort of sour bread with a bit of hops. It forms a nice white head on top of a golden orange body. Nose from the glass is the same. On first sip, those hops are certainly bitter on top of a sour barley taste. It starts out with bitter hops, then moves to a barley bread, and has a semi dry finish with those same bitter hops. The bitter flavor honestly does not even taste like hops, it tastes like dandelion greens steeped in a lightly hopped beer. It is a light body with medium high acidity.

Listening to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. I would call it psychedelic lounge jam rock. Their sound style ranges from mid 1960's to early 1980's, and has a very underground garage band feel. It's the kind of band that I can't imagine many people outside of their local area would have heard about before the internet. Their album art is fantastic, and kind of trippy. I ordered four of their albums, having only heard one and falling in love with the cover art of the others. It's good music to drink beer too, being very chill. I just looked them up, the band is from Melbourne, Australia and has released nine full length albums since forming in 2011. Man, they are doing something right with music in Australia. I might have to visit Melbourne to check it out.

Final thoughts. This beer grew on be a little bit as I drank it, but it still wasn't that good. Not worth the premium I paid for it. I think I'll pop open a STONE IPA now. I still have tonight and tomorrow before my no beer sabbatical. It's only going to be a week, so not bad. I just need to do this on about a monthly or bi monthly basis in order to keep beer as something I enjoy and not something I need.