Left Coast Brewing Co - Hop Juice

Hey all! It's Tuesday night and I'm in the mood for something new. Well, I should rephrase that. This isn't exactly new. At least I don't think it is. I vaguely remember having this beer several years ago, back before I could appreciate good beer. I don't remember anything about this other than I've once tried it. 

What's that? What beer? Oh, tonight I'm drinking another beer from Left Coast Brewing out of San Clemente, CA. This is Hop Juice, a 9.7% abv Double IPA. Yep, still sticking with the hops here. C'mon, I'm in San Diego. Would you expect anything less?? 

So lets get the Hop Juice open and see if it's as good as I don't remember... 

Hop Juice pours out a really deep copper, rust, orange, amber color. Very much clear, not much haze at all. There was about a finger and a half of a very thick, fluffy looking white head. Lots of bubbles in here. The Hop Juice head doesn't linger around very long and leaves behind a very thick and sticky lacing. There's not a lot of carbonation streaming up from the bottom of the glass. I'm guessing just based on looks that this is going to be a thick, heavy DIPA. Let's get the nose. 

Tons of syrupy peach sweetness. I mean, TONS! I'm also getting some mandarin orange, mango, papaya like fruits. There's a lot of caramel and malt sweetness. Very potent. Honestly, the nose is pretty much what I was expecting just from looking at this beer in the glass. Surprisingly, I'm not picking up a lot of hop bitterness so this might not be the freshest of bottles. There is some grass like qualities in the nose, like a wet grass kind of scent. It's more back end then anything else but to me, it's there. I'm ready to see if Hop Juice is worth it. Let's drink up! 

First thing I get is a somewhat subdued hop bitterness. It does a nice job of driving everything else through the palate though. Middle of the tongue is where you get hit with a heavy dose of IBUs. Sides of the palate you get that peach sweetness, mango and papaya. Back end of this you do get more bitterness, some fresh hop characteristics. Actually that's probably the wet grass sort of note I was picking up on the nose. There is some subtle bitter citrus lingering on the palate as well. The caramel-like sweetness is definitely present throughout. 

So overall, Hop Juice isn't bad... but I don't think it's really that great. This has a nice mouth feel, definitely on the thicker side of things. But it's not exactly balanced. I was hoping for more of a balanced DIPA and ended up with the stickier, syrupy sort of sweet DIPA. Again, it's not bad but I wouldn't really go out of my way to pick this up again. Certainly wouldn't turn it down if offered but it's one that otherwise I'd say is a pass. 

Rating: C+