In the Navy

Sierra Nevada's Torpedo IPA took its name from the cylindrical piece of apparatus used to dry hop it. Since it graduated from being a beer to being a whole range of beers (capitalism: yay!), someone in the branding department has decided to militarise it, hence the sonar-style graphics on this latest pair of cans.

First up is Rye Torpedo, a whole percentage point weaker than the original, at 6.2% ABV. It's a lovely rich orange colour with a little haze, without being actually hazy. Rye is good for head retention and you really get your money's worth here: a massive mushroom dome of foam forming. I caught it within three months of canning and it still smelled very freshly hopped, of grapefruit zest and lemon jelly. Rye's peppery quality makes a brief appearance in the flavour, but for the most part it's classic west coast IPA -- just what we come to Sierra Nevada for -- mixing the bright citrus with an equal dose of slick pine oil and backed by a marmalade sweet side. There's nothing extreme here, no hop fireworks nor residual slickness, and I'm not even sure it's a better beer than the original. It's damn tasty, however, and still well worth your while, whether or not you were a fan of Torpedo to begin with. Just don't expect too much rye character.

"Dual Torpedo" is how Admiral Grossman has chosen to signal that the next one is Torpedo as a double IPA. It's 8.2% ABV and double dry hopped. I know that "double dry hopped" generally doesn't mean anything, but at the same time I can't help wonder which version of Torpedo it's the doubled version of. Original? Atomic? We will never know. No rye means it's paler: still slightly murked, but golden, not amber. The aroma is rather more muted too, lacking the zest and emphasising the dank and resin instead. The branding wants us to think hops but the flavour, to me, is malt first. It's a large chap, with a chewy body and acres of bready, cakey, toffee and treacle. Trust Sierra Nevada to continue bringing us double IPA in its earliest known form. Not that this isn't hoppy: that high-gravity base is a launchpad for a panoply of hop fun, including peppery spice, piney resin, citric zest and oily peel: all the classic hits of the American golden age. If you like your retro served fresh, here's the double IPA you need. That said, unlike many of the first wave American double IPAs I drank, this one is clean and finessed, low in heat given the strength, and in the dangerously drinkable category. More than anything, it's happy, and very much a reminder of when big-hop American beer was fun, before all the joyless nerds started over-analysing it. Ahem. 

These are definitely different from Torpedo, and I wish the brewery had the confidence to simply call them something else. But they're both bloody decent beers, highly enjoyable, and worth anyone's time, especially anyone sick of haze and tropical and everything else we must accept that American IPA has become.