So this is My Antonia, the legendary collaboration with Dogfish Head brewed at Birra Del Borgo. You need credentials like that to get me to buy something badged as an imperial pilsner, because they're generally awful awful beers.
My Antonia presents as an attractive rich gold colour with just a few skeins of sediment drifting aurora-like through it. The aroma is sharply zesty: a blaring tocsin of lemon rind and grapefruit pith. The texture is heavy and a little syrupy, almost a barley wine consistency which is perhaps not surprising at 7.9% ABV. For all that, it's subtly flavoured: a bucolic perfume of jasmine and honeysuckle underpinned by sharper citrus and pine. Every sip unveils a different combination of fruit and flowers, but always exquisitely balanced, utilising the big strength to push the hop envelope.
My faith in the collaboration was justified and at the same time I have a new standard of how good something badged as an imperial pilsner needs to be.
did you try the avery/brown dredge brewdog beer a few years back? that was decent too
ReplyDeleteYup. Hated it.
DeleteWhat did you establish in your tasting as the basis for the fluid as opposed to the label being the result of collaboration?
ReplyDeleteWhile the collaboration, as I say, was solely a marketing factor for me, I do think it was possible to taste the fingerprints of the people behind 90 Minute IPA in this.
DeleteI do hope he gave his hands a thorough washing first.
ReplyDelete