Dogfish Head’s Aprihop IPA
By Greg B. This is just a quick review of Dogfish Head’s Aprihop beer. I was in Well’s liquor store the other day and I saw a 4 pack of this style, which I had never heard of! A beer made with apricots does sound pretty good, and an IPA to boot! So I purchased the 4-pack and took it home to wait for the appropriate time.
Well, tonight is the appropriate time! I placed one of the beers in the fridge for about an hour before opening. The bottle tells me the beer is 7%, an IPA and brewed with real apricots. I like the idea of brewing with fruit, though I know a lot of people use the sugars from the fruits (like sugars from figs, which can be found in some Belgian beers and American Belgian style breweries). So, interested in how this turns out, I poured a glass.
The beer pours a really beautiful color, a nice amber color, very clear with a good sized white head which recedes quickly and leaves very minimal, spotty lacing. My troubles with it started as soon as I smelled it…. I smelled just about 0% hoppy aroma and instead smelled just some kind of fermented malty beverage aroma… like a Yuengling that had been left in the trunk of a car for for a few days out in the sun… you get the idea, it had a skunky aroma. Not wanting to, but obligated to try a sample, I sipped the beer.
My response is definitely “Bleh!”. It’s sweet and malty with almost no carbonation to the beer. The skunky flavor continued, and despite just the general sweetness of the beer, no actual flavors stood out, except for maybe some kind of ‘off’ flavor at the back of the throat following the taste.
Ok, so this leaves me with two options. First, Dogfish head made some bad beer. Now, given the sheer number of incredibly amazing beers coming from this brewery, I find it hard to believe that something like this made it out of the brewery, into the bottle and onto the shelves of a store with them knowingly trying to sell it. The second option is that the beer was improperly shipped or handled, which is also a possibility. Who knows what warehouse it sat in, at what temperatures, what truck, where it went and how even the liquor store handled it, but something probably went wrong during that process. I do have 3 other beers in the 4 pack to try, so when I get around to them I can write them up and post potential changes to this article, but until then, I have some doubts about this beer, but am hoping I bought a bad bottle! 2.0/5
[...] 1 Beer, I used Dogfish head Aprihop [...]
That’s a real dissapointment. You can usually rely on DFH to bottle a great beer.
Hi Andy, welcome to the site!
You’re right, Dogfishhead brewery makes some great beer, and they’re also creative and experiment with a lot of styles and flavors, the vast majority of which are both good and interesting. Though, while I didnt like this beer, one of my not-really-a-beer-drinker friends, Jessica, had another bottle and enjoyed it because it was very sweet. So of course, this all comes down to personal preference.
Or, the bottle I opened first was skunked and my perception of the brew was ruined!
I thought that this beer tasted extremely sour. I thought that after it had warmed up a bit it would taste better, but it didn’t… Dogfish Head Black & Blue and Red & White are definitely worth checking out if you haven’t tasted them already!
Hi Katie, welcome!
I’ve not had the Black & Blue or Red & White, but I’ll definitely be on the lookout for them!
Hello Food-and-Wine-Bloggers,
Although Greg was correct in saying that I appreciated the sweet taste of this beer, he left out the second half of my statement. I am not, by any means, an expert in beer related topics, but I do know when things taste good and when they taste bad. In my humble opinion, the aftertaste of this beer is pretty awful. Save this one fact, I would have really enjoyed the beer.
Now that the universe has been righted, I will get back to work.
i tried this at max’s a few weeks ago. i agree with jessica, i liked it well enough until it left the now notoriously terrible aftertaste lingering in my mouth. the only relief was to drink another sip to get rid of that taste, unf not for long! im not sure i can attribute this entirely to the beer, but i felt physically ill about halfway through one & had to go home! highly disappointing coming from dfh & with such a catchy name!
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