It’s not often that you find an unusual beer made with non-traditional ingredients that doesn’t scream, “hey, I’m weird!” Twisted Pine‘s Hoppy Girl may be an exception.
This India Pale Ale pours a light amber with a small, cloud-white head. Tiny notes of tropical fruit comprise the nose, but the aroma doesn’t suggest a hop-forward beer.
Hoppy Girl brings earthy, piney and mossy flavors with the first sip. The hibiscus, jasmine and rose buds that Twisted Pine used in the beer cut into the Cascade bitterness, but these herbs are not individually identifiable. This is one of the reasons why Hoppy Girl is a wonderful beer; the brewery used non-traditional ingredients not to make a hibiscus/jasmine/rose bud beer but to make a great standalone beer that results only from the sum of all of its parts.
The 8.5 percent IPA similarly doesn’t finish with citrus hops. Instead, a tangy caramel note appears, and a rich malt flavor comes through without the traditional heaviness of malt.
Twisted Pine’s Hoppy Girl, the latest in its Artisan Ale series, comes in black 750-ml bottles and has limited availability at Twisted Pine’s Colorado accounts.
The label, which evokes as much curiosity as this herbal IPA, features a black and white photograph entitled “Hush,” which was created by Boulder-based artist Kate Medlin. Between sips of this palate-pleasing beer, take a moment to consider the transfixing mashup on the bottle—two photographs are overlaid of the same girl with different expressions. Is she hoppy or sad?
—Daniel Bradford contributed to this review.
