No. 43 in their ongoing beer/artist collaboration series, this one made with some exotic Wai-iti and Kohatu hops from New Zealand.  Nice David Bowie quote on the label.

This 22oz bottle pours a somewhat hazy, medium copper amber colour, with three fat-ass fingers of puffy, rocky, and chunky off-white head, which leaves some thick streaks of patchy and sudsy lace around the glass as it lazily sinks away.

It smells of pungent caramel/toffee malt, strong and red berry-forward fruity notes, some lesser piney, leafy, and herbal bitterness, and a not so subtle thwack of alcohol ingress up the ol’ nostrils.  The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, biscuity toffee, green strawberries, muddled domestic citrus fruit, further hard to isolate tropicals, and some more understated leafy, grassy, and well-perfumed floral green hoppiness.  The bubbles are certainly active in their swirling and palate-taunting frothiness, the body a solid, heavy-leaning middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a wee airy creaminess pounding at the door simultaneously being shut on it.  It finishes well off-dry, the complex fruitiness and now back-burnered malt really still running this little sideshow.

Overall, this is a rather pleasant and quaffable example of large and in charge American brewing prowess (or hubris, your mileage may vary), mixed with the new commercial Imperialist ethos.  Procure whatever goodness you can from the rest of the world – in this case, it’s hops from a predominately wine-producing region, and get all schwifty, er, sorry, ‘vivid’ with it.  Yeah, I very much liked this one.