Hey gang! Saturday Night here in San Diego after a really nice, warm day here. Spent a little time at a local brewery and then decided to stop by the liquor store for some evening provisions.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the most recent Stone Enjoy By IPA. I grabbed one right away and figured it would make a great review beer. So, surprise here we are. This is actually the first time I've seen one of the Enjoy By beers. I know they're incredibly popular so maybe they were on the shelves and I was too slow to get them? I don't know, but I do know I've finally found one.
So enough rambling, let's get this beer poured and Enjoy the Enjoy by!
Enjoy By pours out a really nice crystal clear golden yellow. Maybe there's a slight bit of orange in there too. It's definitely golden though. There is a nice finger's worth of a white head with some very tight white bubbles. It fades out pretty quickly and leaves behind a soapy looking film on the glass. Not much of a lace. Looks like a fairly standard DIPA.
The nose on Enjoy By is pretty nice. Right away big pine needle coming through. There's a big hop dankness as well. I'm getting a bit of a garlic and onion dankness as well. There's some of your typical grapefruit. Quite a bit of papaya and maybe some mango coming out as well. There's a slight malty character as well. It's fairly sweet and help cut some of that dankness that punches you in the nose immediately when you get that first whiff. There is no alcohol on the nose at all. Those hops and tropical fruits do a great job hiding the 9.4%.
Let's stop smelling this and start drinking!
Right away you get that dank bitterness. Big onions and some garlic. That makes it's way to the middle of the mouth where it fades a bit and some of those tropical fruits arrive. Papaya and Mango for sure. I'm not getting a ton of the tropical fruits though. The dank onion and garlic flavors are so strong in this beer. While there is a bit of that tropical fruit, it's very subtle. This beer finishes very dry, with a lot of lingering dankness....Speaking of lingering... it's been a few minutes since my last sip and I feel like I've eaten onions. It's not horrible or anything, just very... dank. I can't really think of another word to describe it.
Overall, this beer is ok at best. It's not bad by any means. I've had fresher tasting IPA before. I like the idea of an "Enjoy By" beer. Stone is notorious for hoppy beers. This is certainly no different. Unfortunately I can't compare it to the other Enjoy By beers to see how they changed over the last 6 months or so. Stone makes incredible beers and compared to the Stone beers I've had, I'd say this drops the ball a bit.
Rating: C+ B-
Wife hated it. Not worst she's had but definitely up there.
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