Be in no doubt that this beer – Beavertown Lupuloid IPA – is a fearsomely good one. Rip open the tab and there’s already an aroma of juicy hop oil spilling out… tinged with pine resin. You pour it, and it’s a hazy, wheat yellow – that dusty, golden colour you can get when some yeast is lingering; the head was billowing large and tight, rippling up the glass side as it was decanted and settling only slightly – and there in that head was the scent of a tropical lemon grove where the workers have been feasting on lunchtime chunks of juicy, sweet mango and pineapple (with no cheese or cocktail sticks anywhere to be seen). Yes, it’s fearsomely good. It has all the attributes of a proper sausage. Sustaining. Meaty. Rewarding. Enticing. A beer with real substance.
Yet this sausage also has sizzle. Look at the can. It would be rude, demeaning even, to call it a ‘can design’. This is a company who know what they’re about and see the packaging as a canvas to tell us, to sell us and to beguile us. You can’t see it here, but the can top is also a deep pink to match that iridescent pink sky on the can itself. The tab is green to enhance the hop-beast artwork / mural. It’s folksy; it’s threatening and it’s deeply, pugnaciously attractive. This is the bar to which all others aspire. This is proof that whilst sausage is vital, when it sizzles too, the result adds up to much, much more than the sum of its meaty, chunky parts.
Beer Tinted Spectacles 