Review: Kilter Brewing Juicii New England IPA


Wow, the day is finally here where I finally get to review a beer brewed by Kilter Brewing in Winnipeg! My previous two (one, two) reviews were Kilter's collabs with a couple amazing breweries on opposite ends of the country.

Kilter's beer has only been available in Brandon for maybe two weeks and it sold out within a day or two of availability. I managed to pick up a couple of cans of Juicii NEIPA when it was in town.. and I'm glad I did because anything with the Kilter name attached to it sells well in Brandon.. a city that's mostly a Bud Light market, still... after a bajillion years of writing about beer in the community.

Kilter's Juicii is described as a soft, tropical, and juicy New England IPA double dry-hopped with El . Dorado, Vic Secret, Lupulin-enriched Mosaic & Citra. 7%

Appearance: Juicii pours a thick, dark orange with a bit of a copper-brown hue to it. Incredibly hazy as you might expect, not quite orange juice thickness as I've seen with some NEIPAs, like Boréale's IPA du Nord-Est (Rated #1 IPA in the world according to RateBeer.com this year). There's a good amount of snowish whitish head on top that gradually goes down, leaving behind a liberal amount of lacing on the glass.

Aroma: Sweet, juicy and tropical. It has a very orange juice-like aroma to it that's mildly sweet but has that "pulpish" aroma that nobody can ever really describe. There's also notes of pineapple, a bit of creaminess to give it a smoothie-like aroma to it, very much like a creamsicle. Not really bitter or grassy for hop presence, not really that much graininess either.

Taste: I get a bit of a creamsicle right from the beginning - some creaminess, a light amount of sourness and some fruity notes of orange and pineapple. It has a bit of a vegetal leafiness to it as well, but for the most part has a healthy tropical smoothie vibe to it (with some vegetables likely added to make it even more healthy.. but this is a beer, we know there's minimal health benefits!) The aftertaste is a bit vegetal but also a bit of a bitter hop taste as well.

Overall Thoughts: Like any craft beer, this beer changes batch by batch, this one was a bit more vegetal than many, it was still tropical with a hint of creaminess to it, easy to drink and damn well worthy of being a Day Off Brunch Beer as not everyone has the pleasure of getting Saturdays or Sundays off (like us retail employees). I absolutely love what Miguel at Kilter's doing and I've been following his beers since he was over at Bridge Brewing in BC. For a while, every time I visited Half Pints, he was there brewing like heck with the rest of the awesome guys at HP! I'm happy he's doing his own thing, I'm usually wrong on a lot of things but I knew he'd do well as a brewer in MB if he ever moved back and here we are.. This is the third beer associated with him that I've reviewed. Cheers!

https://kilterbrewing.co/pages/beer

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