Bumper Crop Farmhouse DIPA

Beer’d Bumper Crop Imperial Farmhouse IPA
1 growlette, $6, 8.3% ABV

Purchased at the brewery, Stonington

bushelStonington, where Beer’d is located, has a long and storied history of shipbuilding. As the more knowledgeable CTMQ readers know, Stonington includes the part of Mystic on the east side of the river. And since it’s one of my crusades, I’ll write it again: No, Mystic is not one of Connecticut’s 169 towns. It never was and never will be.

Hell, half of Mystic is in Groton fer Christ’s sake. Regardless of all that, Mystic is certainly one of our fine state’s most visited tourist destinations – and for good reason. Sure, you can go to the aquarium, but beyond that, there’s a ton of stuff to do there.

Now, if you do go to Mystic on a weekend, you’re an idiot if you don’t make the 5 minute trek east to Beer’d. (And if you don’t like beer but do drink wine, Saltwater Vineyard is out that way too, and they are probably the best vineyard in the state.)

Aaren at Beer’d is quickly becoming the DIPA Queen of Connecticut (though I’m sure he’d probably pass that honor to his wife, just for propriety’s sake.) New England Brewing’s Gandhi Bot is the King, but it better keep an eye on the rear-view mirror in its tanga.

Now, the Bumper Crop isn’t really a classic DIPA at all. For this beer, Beer’d upped the yeast content and declared it a “farmhouse imperial IPA.” (I guess their recent collaboration with Relic had an effect or something.)

Beer¹d Says:

Sometimes you get more than you bargained for. Bumper Crop yields a high ABV backed with flavors and aromas of apricot, white pepper, and naval oranges.

2573564366_a42bcd667eYeah, right. Apricot? White pepper? Smell. Oh snap. Drink. Apricot! And white pepper! I swear. And the yeast profile was most certainly present, but not in an overwhelming or sour or ruinous way. This is a very interesting beer; sort of a “best of both worlds” type beer. You have your Belgiany farmhousery and you have your classic Beer’d DIPA bombast. In other words, it is an excellent beer.

The apricot notes really intrigued me. For some weird reason, I distinctly recall drinking apricot nectar as a kid. I kind of hated it, because it was so viscous, but I always loved the taste. (It’s actually sort of hard to find these days, so I have no idea how or why my parents always had it on hand.) It’t not like Aaren added nectar to his mash, but the hops he used really do have notes of the fruit in it. And I liked it.

But what about these “naval oranges” noted on the little description tag Beer’d cleverly provides with each fill? (Broadbrook Brewing does this too, and I rather like it.) I mentioned that much of Mystic is in Groton, but what I failed to mention is that Groton is home to a large Naval presence. It is home to a huge submarine base and Electric Boat, which is a big part of the military industrial complex.

In fact, the “Welcome to Groton” signs say “”Submarine Capital of the World.” So perhaps Beer’d’s typo of “naval oranges” was not a typo after all, but rather an homage to the geographically close massive Naval presence.

Why not? Beer’d never screws up in the beer or customer service department, so I choose to believe they get everything else right too.

Overall Rating: A
Rating vs. Similar style: A+

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