27 January 2015 - Best Beer HQ

Craft beer review: Knife Party IPA, Liberty Brewing

Craft beer review: Knife Party IPA, Liberty Brewing

ABV: 7.1%

Bottle: It has a very cool beer label on the 500ml bottle, featuring a mouth and a hop – both with arms and legs – stabbing each other with knives. It’s bright and cheerful (the stabbing notwithstanding) and, as an indication of what’s to come when I actually try this beer, it’s not at all misleading.

Blurb on the bottle: Originally brewed for the West Coast IPA Challenge in 2013, the name of this beer wasn’t always planned to be so grotesque. You see… I had penned the name ‘Yakima Kitchen Sink’ as it had pretty much every hop variety I could get from the USA thrown in. However, whilst filling the kegs for this esteemed competition, a song came on Spotify and made the task so much more enjoyable that I decided to change the name. But let’s face it: ‘Yakima Kitchen Sink’ was a bit rubbish really!

Anyhow, regardless of the name… the beer continued to take out the champion spot which was one of the most proud moments of my life. It’s just a shame I wasn’t there to enjoy the celebrations!

Enjoy the taste of indecision and victory at refrigeration temperature with your friends or family.

Tastes like: Happiness – or should that be hoppiness. Liberty Brewing’s Knife Party IPA is strong on flavour, packing a nice fruity punch that’s assertive without being overly aggressive.

Knife Party pours a rich golden colour with a creamy head. I could smell passion fruit, mango, caramel – or that could have the big bowl of passion fruit and mango with caramel sauce that I was eating at the time. Only joking.

Is it the best beer ever? On this sunny afternoon in Auckland, after spending the day swimming at Piha Beach, Knife Party IPA very well could be the best beer in the world. That might be the sun stroke talking.

Knife Party IPA is very drinkable, which proved a problem when I all-too-quickly ran out of it. Worse, the beer is a seasonal release by Liberty Brewing and it seems to be rather difficult to get any more bottles of it.

Still, I do recommend you try to get your hands on this rather excellent beer. I’ve read online that Liberty Brewing may brew another batch after this one proved so popular. Of course, you can’t believe everything you read online…

Other beers by Liberty Brewing that are worth your time and money: If you can’t get your hot little hands on a bottle of Knife Party IPA, you thankfully shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a bottle of the West Auckland craft brewery’s excellent Yakima Monster (just look for the striking beer label featuring monster hands).

Thanks to my mate Rudy for giving me a bottle of Knife Party IPA for my 30th birthday!

Craft Beer New Zealand / review /

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