Mikkeller Simcoe single hop IPA isn't what I hop'd it to be

David is away in Austria and Florida all week (filming the Space Shuttle's last launch! He will have seen the last two shuttle launches EVER. Lucky bastard), but I'm not that jealous because it's Mikkeller time.

I would classify Mikkeller - from what I know - as a brewer's brewer. Mikkeller is Danish and is a 'gypsy' brewer, brewing and collaborating all over the world. The beer world loves him. I picked up five of his beers, which are only available in 11 ounce bottles for around $5 and they would be hard to split with David so I'm taking advantage of his absence to squeeze them in before the year ends.

I'm especially excited because two of the five are single hop IPA's, which will be a cool experiment. Beers almost always combine multiple hops to create complexity, but Mikkeller created a line of IPA's to highlight the contributions of several hops. Sam Adam did a single IPA box of beers and I heard they were not so tasty. I bet this is different.

I chose the Simcoe IPA to drink first because I have a nostalgic connection to the hop. The first IPA I made, a Double Belgian IPA called Double Dutch Rudder, was made with Simcoe and it has a very unique hop bite to it. I am of the understanding that Simcoe is a 'super hop,' and so the hop complexity owed itself primarily to Simcoe and not the two other hops I used as well.

Well after tasting this single hop, I am quite wrong. The IPA isn't as bitter as I hoped it to be and the body is surprisingly clean and malty. Simcoe, I'm learning, is a far more subtle and earthy hop than I supposed it to be. I like this IPA because it is refreshing and I learned a great deal from it. That being said, I'm not going to rate it highly because it is, after all, a single hop beer and it's not something I'd recommend everyone spending their money on unless they're a homebrewer. ARMAGEDDON rating