Bear Republic Apex IPA
After making our pilgrimage to wi…, er, beer country back in February for my wife’s birthday, we’d been anxious to try Apex IPA again. Among other non-bottled offerings that we enjoyed at Bear Republic, Apex was definitely a standout for both of us (although the Chardonnay Hop Rod Rye was my favorite), but were we just caught up in the moment, wandering euphorically at half-mast just at the thought of finally getting to the source of Racer 5? Well, maybe just a bit…
While many places on the web have Apex listed as a IIPA, the brewpub calls this just a single- check the picture at the top from their beer board. Clocking in at 7.8% abv, it’s a big single and probably most accurately described as a double Racer 5, or Racer’s big brother. In fact, it’s just like Racer 5 in many ways, but amplified. Having only had bar pours both times, I’m not quite sure what the head looks like (I imagine it’s great, fluffy and frothy-as all head should be), but it’s amber-orange in color with a dominantly floral sniffer on it. As the color and sniffer might suggest, it has a pretty heavy malt profile with some mild sweetness, but fortunately the bitterness kicks in to give it a nice hoppy finish. In all honesty, it was actually a little too balanced for my liking: the strong malt profile and the floral, pine resin hop presence were too complimentary, combining to form a very pleasant and palatable offering that was just too far down the spectrum towards an East Coast interpretation of the style. Perhaps it is the apex of well balanced IPAs, but I’m not big on balance when it comes to this style.
Don’t get me wrong, I did really enjoy this beer and would drink it again, but I think the ambiance and the occasion in Healdsburg made it taste a little better. After all, we were sitting at the bar at 11:30 am on my wife’s birthday- both of us with big shit-eating grins on our faces- listening to some big, grizzly bear- looking motherfucker tell us stories about nosediving into mountains of white powder the size of anthills down in the hippy-crack ghetto of Montezuma, Costa Rica back in the 1970’s. Do you blame me?
Official booze reviews score: 90 points (add 2 more points if you have the good fortune of trying it at the brewpub)
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Damnit, I had high hopes. Everything tastes better from the source.
The few times I have had Racer X, I haven’t been that impressed either. Racer 5 remains the ultimate gateway IPA though.
The 10oz glass I had at Beachwood was quite interesting. While it wasn’t a “blow your head off with hops IPA” that we’ve come to love, it had a really nice subtle juicy hop character and and overall sweet body that wasn’t the under-attenduated sugary type of sweetness that sucks in IPA’s. More along the lines of sweetness I get out of that O’Brien’s IPA malt backbone. But I don’t think I would care for this a ton in a larger than 10oz serving.