How strong is too strong? Opinions differ, but for my part I believe that if you want to go nuts, then you should go nuts. Usually this means brewing a double, or even triple IPA, but not to Auckland’s Brothers Beer, who have well and truly gone nuts with their 13.5% Mighty Quinn.
Fueled by an enormity of New Zealand and American hops, in about every form they take (cryo, flakes etc), and so much malt they must have had to dial up the kettle just to get it to boil.
Even in the absence of any stance as to how high a ABV ‘should’ go, as the number ticks into the double digits, it rapidly becomes a case of ‘how high can you get away with’. Mighty Quinn, more or less, has somehow gotten away with it’s ridiculous 13.5%.
The aroma kicks off with a sharp lash of ripe citrus, before plunging into pineapple and passion fruit sorbet, crushed red berries and rockmelon. On the tongue, there’s a massive upfront concentration of ultra ripe fruit salad, with mango melon and pineapple featuring most strongly. It’s long and weighty on the palate as one might expect, but with the astonishing %abv in mind, it stays remarkably nimble. It’s only at the very end after the mild bitterness subsides that the alcohol is significantly exposed. So long as it was chilled, you could very easily down a pint of this without even realising what you’d done. Though you would, I expect, find out in due course…
In the pantheon of stupid strong IPAs (and I’ve tried a few) this might be one of the most successful, and certainly one of the most drinkable, I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know why they did it, but damn it if Brothers haven’t pulled it off.