Drake's Brewing - Denogginizer

Hey gang! Time for another beer review. I picked this one up the other day and decided to crack it open and see if it's really worth it. So tonight I'm drinking Denogginizer from Drake's Brewing out of San Leandro, CA. 

Denogginizer is an 9.75% abv Imperial IPA. This one is hopped up with a ton of Simcoe, Columbus, Amarillo & Cascade hops. That's a lot of hops which are counter acted with some Munich and Crystal malts. Sounds like a pretty good, ramped up, DIPA. Let's see how this one looks.

The Denogginizer pours out a really nice copper color, bordering on a slightly rusty color. There's a real nice finger to maybe just a bit more than a finger, of a fluffy white head. Lots of bubbles on this one. Head has a decent retention time and leaves behind a fairly standard looking soapy-like lacing. There's a decent amount of carbonation in this one which is nice to see. Looks like a good one. Let's get the nose.

Wow, really interesting nose. Lots of sugary, caramel like sweetness. Doesn't immediately strike me as an IPA at all. There's an abundance of peach juice in this. Big sweet, overly ripe peaches. I'm picking up some nice Mandarin Orange like characters. Some nice sweet, bread or cake like body in the nose. Really not picking up a ton of bitterness in this because it's just so potent in the sweet malts. I'm intrigued. Time to do some drinking.

So first things first, there's a nice hop bitterness present right away at the front of the palate. But big surprise, this is immediately slammed to the ground by a ton of caramel sweetness. That paves the way for that hop bitterness to make it's way into the middle of the palate. Sides of the mouth you get that sugary sweetness, lots of peach syrup. Back end of this you get a lot of bitterness and some of that bready sort of cake like body. There's also more of that peach character, maybe even a bit of a rum-like flavor. For 9.5% you kind of get the alcohol but it's pretty well hidden. 

Overall, I'm liking the Denogginizer from Drake's. It's not like a typical DIPA I'm used to. Not much in the way of citrus. This is really more of a malty DIPA, big body, nice mouth feel. It's a little on the syrupy side for me though. I definitely am more in favor of the citrus bombs that lean more towards the juicy side of the spectrum. Despite that, I do like this and wouldn't say no to picking up more of this. I'll definitely pick up a few more Drake's in the future and see how the rest of their beers compare and stand up to this one.

Rating: B