Whistle Pig January visit

This was the first time we visited Whistle Pig and the first time for me sampling their beers. I had somewhat high expectations since I’d heard good things about the brewery from coworkers and associates. I’m sad to say was was a bit disappointed. Overall, I found the beers to be drinkable, but not memorable – at least not in a good way.

Blue Line IPA (#1 in above picture) – 6.7% ABV 70 IBU – This was a great IPA. Smooth start with a hoppy finish. Definite grapefruit in between. Definitely the star of the show.

Juniper IPA (#2) – 6% ABV 65 IBU – I certainly “got” what they were going for here. I was able to pick up the juniper obviously giving this IPA a piney flavor The juniper was a bit more muted that I would have guessed that it might have been, but that may have been for the best. I could see that flavor becoming a monster pretty easily. Otherwise, this was a drinkable beer, not bad.

English Brown (#3) – 6.2% ABV 12 IBU – This was a decent brown. Started with a lightly sweet malt flavor which mellowed into a chocolate. I didn’t detect any hops at the finish. My biggest complaint with this beer was the
mouth-feel. It didn’t have quite enough body, in my opinion.

Imperial Stout (#4) – 13.8% ABV 40 IBU – So, this is the beer that threw me. This beer came highly recommended to me so I wanted to make sure I tried it. And, to be clear, when I say “highly recommended”, I’m talking about phrases such as “awesome”, “delicious” and “best” being tossed about. Heck, even looking on untappd.com, it seems that most people are raving about it. The bartender said it was great as well. It’s a small batch and very popular. OK, set me up.

Long story short – I am not a fan.

It had been a while since I had a good imperial stout, so I was looking for ward to it. First sip. Starting out great, nice and malty, good mouth feel, chocolate flavor, OK, then….wham! Some weird astringent flavor. Huh? A few more sips to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. Nope. That same weird aftertaste. The bartender asked what I thought and I mentioned what I was tasting. “Oh, that would be the cayenne.”. Whoa. I was not expecting that. I’m normally down for trying “weird” beers, but some warning would have been cool. That astringent follow-through really put me off.

Whistle Piss – 5.3% ABV 25 IBU – I was underwhelmed with this beer. It’s a pilsner, but it didn’t really have much in the way of flavor, good or bad. It was a solid “OK”. If you’re going to drink beer, there are better ones to be drinking (see Blue Line IPA, above).