Eipiei - Microbirrificio Opperbacco

danieelol

Australia

2.58/5  rDev -6.2%
look: 4 | smell: 3 | taste: 2.5 | feel: 2.5 | overall: 2

From notes.

Pours orange with good head and lacing.

Smell is plasticcy hops, some mango, tangerine, grapefruit. Very plasticcy. Musty character.

Taste is extremely bitter. Like they use hop extract in this. Finishes dry with dirty mango.

Just chucking as much bitterness into a beer as possible is not a recipe for success. Becomes somewhat more manageable after a while.

I don't feel most of these Italian beers represent particularly good value. Should focus more on tasty dry-hop character and less on artificial-tasting intense bitterness.

If you've got some I recommend you eat it with something spicy or otherwise strongly flavoured as it really needs something to subdue it.

Serving type: bottle

01-05-2013 15:43:11 | More by danieelol

lacqueredmouse

Australia

2.93/5  rDev +6.5%
look: 3.5 | smell: 3 | taste: 3 | feel: 3 | overall: 2.5

Big 500ml bottle, plastic sealed and capped, with a very pleasant tactile label. Purchased from Platinum Liquor in Bellevue Hill.

Pours a clear copper colour, with a massive, crackling, perhaps overcarbonated head that eventually settles to a large, frothy mess, leaving loose styrofoam lacing. Body actually looks quite flat, but the clarity is good. Looks decent enough.

Nose is sweet, and faintly fruity, but with a very solid, perhaps overly pressing malt character, and a little huskiness from the grain. There's some mushy overripe fruit from the hops, but weirdly skewed towards strawberries and melon, and a wafting fragrance of plasticine. I can't say I'm a huge fan, to be honest.

Taste is light but bogged down again by the aggressive malt character, which attaches to everything, leaving a sticky lethargy behind. Still more of that faint fruitiness, more melon skewed this time, and an apathetic bitterness on the back. But it really seems to be heavier and less pleasant than it really should be. And than it deserves to be.

Feel is light enough, but the malt gives it the feeling that it's heavier than it should be.

This is disappointing stuff. This is just too cloying and nowhere near drinkable enough. It also doesn't deserve at all to be in such an attractive bottle. And I now feel like a sucker for falling for the cover and not the contents.

Serving type: bottle

03-24-2013 03:19:49 | More by lacqueredmouse