Whatever you made of the closing chapters of the original nine-parter, or indeed the conveyor belt of spin-off movies and TV series, there's no denying Star Wars looks well on track to live as a long as a Wookiee, perhaps even Yoda himself. And while Holgate's Millennium Falcon is a long way off such longevity, it's up there with the longest-running sagas in Australian craft beer: the 2023 release ahead of May the Fourth brings up a decade of releases.
This time around, they've kept their "Emperial IPA" to a mere 9 percent ABV and plumped for an all-American hop bill. It comes across as a supercharged American pale ale, in the sense that the key elements – the fruity hop aromas, the softly sweet pale malts, and the oily, resinous bitterness – have grown up together.
It doesn't explode out of the glass aromatically like a tropical fruit salad, it's not as chewy as some West Coast-inspired IIPAs can be, nor as bitter. At the same time, it does possess tropical characteristics – ripe pineapple to the fore, with a dark berry, almost liquorice-like tinge to the bitterness – while there is a little stickiness to the texture, and the bitterness builds and builds too. Yet rather than attempting to knock you sideways, the brewers have wrapped it all up neatly. A lesson, perhaps, for J J Abrams.
James Smith
Published May 1, 2023 2023-05-01 00:00:00