Review: Beyond the Pale Imperial Super Guy

Mon ami Ryan was raving about this one brewery called Beyond the Pale Brewery in Ottawa, stating that it was easily becoming one of Ontario's best breweries, so good that the brewery is closed to public Sunday to Wednesday so that the brewers can keep brewing small batches of amazing beer for the local beer geeks. Since the brewery is only open from Thursday to Saturday for beer geeks to buy their product, it can be hard for some people to make the trek down the brewery and pick up some fresh microbrew but that if you do - you are lucky. I believe him, he knows good beer!

Ryan picked up a few bottles of Beyond the Pale's beer, I don't recall one of the beers at the moment but the other one was Imperial Super Guy. With a name like Imperial Super Guy, it reminds me of a mashup of Teeny Little Super Guy and 5 Neat Guys. Imperial Super Guy is an Imperial Rye IPA with 9.1% ABV, higher than your standard IIPA/DIPA, 90 IBU and comes in an awesome 1L jug that I like to call "the mega stubby"

Appearance: Pours a thick murky amber honey orange. Reminiscent to me of a barley wine or.. of course.. a solid DIPA/IIPA, minimal beige head on top, but decent amount of carbonation.

Aroma: Mmmm Imperial IPA for the win.. it's a bitter pine, grapefruit, a bit of a syrupy note and incredibly sugary.

Flavour: Malted rye, incredibly bitter, some pine notes, even more rye notes. A minimal amount of citrus, some caramel popping up in there, even more hops, and yep.. rye! It's interesting.. I like bitterness so if you like bitter bitter IPAs, you'll love it, but if you like more of a citrus/malty IPA, you will be disappointed.

Overall Thoughts: No wonder they're closed most of the week.. very interesting take on a Rye Imperial IPA, Imperial Super Guy - at 90 IBU is quite a bitter IIPA. Minimal notes of citrus, more rye and hops than anything. Incredibly thick.. but at 9.1% ABV, it's a savouring beer. Also, the "mega stubby" HAS to be shared, though you could theoretically save the beer for later as it has a screw-cap for easy re-usability.. which means home brewers can use this for home brewing easily!

http://beyondthepale.ca/home.html#beers