By Greg B. Sometimes, as a homebrew, you come across humbling beers.  Either a beer that challenges you to brew it, or dares you to try to brew that style or perhaps just opens up a brand new flavor avenue that you just didn’t know existed.  And sometimes you come across a beer that you know you can brew, or have brewed, just by tasting it.  This is one of those times.  It’s been almost a year since I last reviewed anything from RJ Rockers, but they are the South Carolina brewery that knows how to work that malty flavor and mouthfeel in their beers.  With this beer, it looked a little bit fancier than the 12 pack I had sampled last year, so I figured I’d check it out and see what the brewery has been up to in the past year.  This is when I got a very big surprise, as you’ll see.

The beer comes in a wax topped 22oz bottle (or 1pint, 6ounces, depending on who you’re talking to or what regulatory agency feels like is appropriate at what time).  I decided the best way to drink this beer was going to be a nice flared glass mug.  Why?  Well it’s a dark IPA, and I wanted to see that delicious dark body of the beer fully, in the glass mug (I like this mug a lot) and yet use the flared top to give it a wide enough surface to show off some of the hop aromas.  So I opened the bottle (remember to remove the wax before trying to open, it’ll make things easier) and began to pour… when I was struck by how similar the beer looked to something I had brewed… and when the first whiff of the beer hit me, I knew just what it was:  It smelled, looked (and later tasted) almost identical to the recipe for my homebrew for Renee’s graduation beer, the Mother’s Milk!  The beer pours a dark semi-translucent brown color, which in a thick mug really shows the dark brown aspect, a small, 1 finger of light tan head shows up, but rapidly fades to a thin film of bubbles at the top, almost like a hand-pump style ale shows it’s head.  Aromas of sweet resinous pine and sweeter malt really come through, which on the taste also really show their dominance.  There are bitter hops at the finish, with a very resinous pine flavor up front, and after a few sips a some dark roasted malts hint at their existence.  After you swallow, if you wait about another 30 seconds before your next sip, you’ll notice a nice dark roast flavor as well.  It’s a nice beer, a bit cloying with the sweetness of the malt and the pine hops.  I’d probably only want about 12oz if I was drinking it in one sitting, but a good and interesting take on beer nonetheless.  2.3/5, 9.5% abv