Brown Shugga' - Lagunitas Brewing Company

tectactoe

Michigan

3.95/5  rDev -1.3%
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 4

Pours a copper, orange-amber hybrid color with pretty good clarity that is only compromised by a slight haze that drifts up and down the glass in the very center. A musky, off-white head forms on top of the beer, remains small, and holds fast as a thin ring along the top.

Brown Shugga's aroma is that of a strong, syrupy, peppery hop, right alongside sweet, booze-filled plums and raisins. Heavy, heavy caramel and toffee on the nose, sugary and sweet. Again, lots of hop aromas are coming out of this as well; spicy, herbal, ashy, oily, and pungent. I can't tell if this is an overly-hopped malty ale or an overly-malty IPA of sorts. It's got enough of a hop aroma to smell like a malty DIPA, but it could also pass off as a hopped-up barleywine with a malt structure like it has... I guess we'll see.

Brown Shugga is pretty thick and syrupy on the palate without being overly abrasive, though it is a bit sticky. The flavor profile that hits your tongue is complex and hard to exactly pin down. Heavy caramel and toffee make up the backbone; molasses, syrup, burnt brown sugar, booze, ripe raisins, sweet plums - this beer is a malt bomb, and that's a FACT. Sweet and sugary as they come with lots of residuals that stick to the palate and seem to hang on for dear life...

...BUT WAIT! Here come the hops - pungent, earthy, herbal, ashy, oily, and providing a bitterness that cuts through the sweetness at the last minute to provide a balance that you never thought would be possible after the first moments of the sip. The gradient of flavors across my palate still has me wondering exactly what kind of beer this really is. Talk about smearing style guidelines! Some boozy black cherries and leafy hops fade into the aftertaste with a sweet and sugary decrescendo. Carbonation was medium, maybe on the low side, with a fairly thick body.

Pretty tasty. Almost reminds me of an aged DIPA, but where the hop character is still fairly heavy and robust after the aging. Then again, it could be a malty-ass barleywine with quadruple the amount of hops used. Sweet, but not sickeningly so. Nice balance when all's said and done. Though the booze is noticeable, it's still fairly easy to throw back for being nearly 10% ABV.

Serving type: bottle

01-27-2013 17:41:45 | More by tectactoe

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