Lagunitas Brewing Company - Lagunitas Sucks - Brown Shugga' Substitute Ale

What's up everyone? It's Wednesday night. My hockey team lost tonight. It's sort of a shitty day all around. I'm cheering myself up with a beer that I've had a couple times recently but I just haven't remembered to review it. So I figured tonight was a perfect night for that.

Tonight I'm drinking Lagunitas Sucks - Brown Shugga Substitute Ale by Lagunitas Brewing Company out of Petaluma, CA.

That name is way too long, so we're just going to say "Sucks" or "Lagunitas Sucks"... which for the record, they do not. They're an awesome brewery that pretty much can't be beat for the price to quality ratio. I might be saying that wrong, but you get the idea. So let's get the Sucks poured and see how it stands up to the other offerings from Lagunitas.

Sucks comes in at 7.85% abv and pours out a clear golden yellow. There was about a 2 finger foamy white head that stuck around for a bit leaving behind a semi decent sticky white foam like lacing. There's a semi decent cascade of carbonation bubbles streaming up from the bottom of the glass. Not a ton like some of the other Lagunitas beers, but I've found with a lot of the danker IPA, that cascade effect isn't as prevalent. This looks like a pretty standard DIPA. Let's get the nose.

First thing I get is big grapefruit. Just massive amounts of grapefruit juice and zest. Right behind that is a massive amount of the dank onion and garlic bitterness. I mean, this smells like a freshly chopped onion and some freshly peeled garlic. There's a slight bit of caramel sweetness as well that sort of sits in the background of all this dank hop smell. But yeah, I keep going back to try and get something else but I'm just blown away by that dank onion and garlic. It's completely overpowering that initial waft of grapefruit. Let's see if this tastes as dank as it smells.

Wow, sure enough I'm immediately picking up a grapefruit citrus character but that is immediately beat down by dank onion and garlic. It's really strong in this beer. Maybe stronger than I've experienced in a DIPA. It's super fresh tasting though which I think really makes it more enjoyable. If this were "old" I'd imagine the onion and garlic would be awful. As dank as those hops are, they don't linger like the smell. The dankness gets replaced in the middle/back end of mouth by a really nice citrus sweetness. Grapefruit and some tangerine characters with a bit of zest thrown in. It's very well balanced. Sucks finishes pretty dry and overall is just a really good tasting DIPA.

So overall, Sucks is a fantastic beer. It's incredibly balanced especially considering it goes from citrus to dank to citrus and really just flows perfectly. You get a nice variety of hop profile within a single sip of beer. Lagunitas really knows what they're doing with their beers. I've never had a bad Lagunitas beer. With that said, as dank as this is, I'm not a big fan of the dank hops. But, that's just me. This is a world class DIPA and should be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys hops.

Rating: A (very solid)