Green Flash Palate Wrecker

Day 2 of Melbourne's Good Beer Week (already I reminisce with such fondness..) and nothing to do until the booked dinner that evening.. time to kick back and relax with that bastion of genteel alcohol consumption, Palate Wrecker.

Shout out to Beer DeLuxe by the way, if you're in town on business (or otherwise) this place is right there in Fed Square and has a frankly jealousy inducing collection of beers for you to try. Great lunch specials also.


But yes, Palate Wrecker. $13.50 for this 9.5% self proclaimed monster but on tap, why wouldn't you? Lovely thick frothy suds on this beer lace stickily like nobody's business, and the aroma gets you even from a distance with its tropical tales of peaches and pine. This is a beer with a purpose, nay, an agenda.

Happily, this beer does attempt to smash your tonsils on first encounter. I've been drinking some big beers but not since Ruination have I encountered such a thwack of astringency: to learn it's 149 IBU is no great surprise. It's juicy, full and thick with sour oily ester-like character. This beer is not especially well integrated to my mind - while there is sufficient malt background to smooth the massive spike of acrid, orange rind oily hops, it all washes in toward the end of the flavour distribution like some inexplicably friendly tsunami.

Still - for a beer whose sole purpose is to hit you as hard as it can, none of this is really a minus. So kick off your next dinner party with palate wrecker, that's how the cool kids roll. 8.5