Mountain Goat produce short-batch runs of special beers, or colaboration beers, and this IPA is part of their short-run batches. It comes in as a five-star beer, with a smooth silky hop taste flowing over like a waterfall in your mouth.

Not a lot of cabonation to this beer, it pours straight out into the glass, with little, or no head to it. A light brown colour of an IPA, no surprise there, and the beer is typical of an English-style IPA with a very flat beer, so the head either needs working on, or it will be just an afterthought. I like my beer at cellar temperature, with bags of flavour and little carbonation, so this is immediately a hit with me. A bit of swilling around in your glass and the head quickly returns as a silky light cream.

Not much aroma outside of the strong hop smell in this beer. The hops are slightly oily, and there is an underlying aroma of wood and soil-lined forest floors. The setup here is the hops before you drink it.

Initial impressions are a slightly sweet taste, fruity like raisins or grapes. This is only a slight taste at the start, and completely removed when the hops slam into your mouth. The hops here are slightly oily, as with their aroma, and that migrates into a smooth and slipery mouth feel to the body. There are some who do not like the resins that come from over-hop produced beers, and this would be the dominant flavour, but in an IPA, the strong hop characteristic is difficult to get without some oily resin qualities. The aftertaste is a classic English-IPA with the hop and bitterness at the back of your throat, but with that dying away you get the oils of the hops that coat your mouth and make the beer smooth and shiny.

Summary. Another excellent Rare Breed from the makers of great beers. This is a heavily hopped smooth IPA which is best served at cellar temperature, and has a near-perfect combination of bitterness and hops to produce a very noteworthy beer. If anything against this beer, is the resins do produce slightly too much oil qualities which would not be everyone’s tastes. The sweet fruity tastes at the start, and the hops make it a perfect beer for a curry, but savour this beer, don’t gulp it down or you would miss out.