26 May 2016 - Best Beer HQ
8 Wired Superdank IPA craft beer review
Spring cleaning is a terrible waste of a Saturday afternoon. But just about the only thing that got me through it was the promise of big bottle of 8 Wired’s Superdank IPA, which I’d picked up that morning at Hopscotch Beer Company in Auckland.
So let’s see if this dank hop India pale ale, which came highly recommended by the man who filled up my growler (that’s definitely not a euphemism, by the way), can salvage my Saturday after I’ve just been scrubbing the floors, walls and kitchen for the last couple of hours.
ABV: 6.2%
Taste: Actually, at first sip, this beer may be as resinous as the bucket of hot soapy water I’d been using to scrub around the oven. But I’ll bet that nasty water doesn’t taste even half as good as this beer, which positively bursts with flavour.
8 Wired’s Superdank IPA catches me a bit off guard, to be honest. Its vibrant, juicy, herbaceous flavouring is reminiscent of a fresh-hopped beer, with a lovely tropical-fruit aroma that complements it rather nicely. It’s certainly a lot better than the cleaning products I’ve been breathing in for the past couple of hours.
This craft beer is initially bitter, with a satisfying long-lingering and sweet-malty finish; it’s exactly the sort of beer that you should have a glass of water afterwards, though, or your palate will be contaminated by it.
The beer pours an orange-amber colour, with only mild carbonation. That’s certainly not a deal breaker, though, as you don’t want too many bubbles getting in the way of pounding this delicious beer back.
So is it the best beer ever? It’s a bloody good one, made all the more delicious because I’ve actually earned it with some hard work for a change. I’m not sure where exactly you can get 8 Wired Superdank IPA from – I’ve never seen it in any jobs that I can recall, and even finding information about it online has proven difficult – but I’d say it’s definitely worth buying a litre or two of the good stuff if you do happen to stumble across it.
Movie/beer pairing: When I drink this beer and taste those thick resinous hops I can’t help but think of that green inferno – the jungle. And since cleaning my house today (the horror!) was kind of like my own personal version of a tour of duty in ‘Nam, one movie springs to mind.
And that movie is a little-known flick called Apocalypse Now…