Craft Beer Review #1 - Cloudwater Brew Co.: Appropriate Contents

The Brewery

Cloudwater Brew Co. is a craft brewery that was founded in 2014 in Manchester, England, but began brewing on Valentine's Day 2015 (I can only assume as a romantic gesture towards me). Manchester is quickly becoming something of a craft brewing Mecca (a quick look at a list of craft breweries in Manchester is making me feel a little pilgrimatic^[1] towards the city).

Cloudwater pride themselves on producing quality beer, offering "value through bold precise flavours" and "bottomless drinkability". Now, that may sound like marketing spin, but it's probably often true as most of their beers have felt dangerously sessionable to me. With one notable exception^[2]. 

Cloudwater produces anything from kettle sours and brewed radlers^[3], to massive triple IPAs. However, they're famous for producing a huge number of seasonal one-off beers, and regularly collaborating with some of the best breweries in the world. 

Appropriate Contents is a one-off beer, not a core beer or a collaboration, but it is no longer available on their website at the time of writing this blog.

Okay, full disclosure, I really like this brewery. So far, I've only had eleven of their magic brews, but I've given them an average score of 4.02 on Untappd. Their Double NEIPA Nice IRL has been my favourite of the eleven, and I gave it a score of 4.75.  In fact, I have something of a little man crush on this brewery, and I get excited when I see a new release from them that I can get my hands on. I'm really hoping this beer lives up to my expectations...

First Impressions

The beer comes in a nice, pastel blue can. Simple, but okay. A lot of t cans follow the same "theme": a central Cloudwater logo, the name of the beer at the bottom, and a colourful background (Nice IRL was orange and red themed say). There's no mistaking a Cloudwater can, but they are all at least subtly different. 

When pouring the beer^[4] a head formed readily. The head stuck around for a bit, but not for so awkwardly long that we had small talk talk centred around the weather. The beer is a murky, hazy pale gold colour, which was to be expected. Appropriate Contents looks every part a NEIPA^[5].

The smell is pineapple, and maybe a little mandarin. I've never been good at the properly snobby descriptions, so I'll say what I actually first thought. It actually smells like a bottle of tropical breakfast juice. Not the freshly squeezed stuff though, but rather the reconstituted type that could last forever on a post-apocalyptic store shelf, and is probably available as DLC in Fallout 4. 

It's worth noting that this beer was brewed to show off a new popular hop variety, called Sabro. I've read that it is meant to be the next big thing in hops, challenging the popularity of the Citra and Mosaic varieties^[6].

I'm getting genuinely excited. 

The Tasting

It tastes a lot like a freshly squeezed breakfast juice made from predominantly pineapple, orange, and mango nectar, but slightly bitter. Thank God that it's slightly bitter, and not too sweet, making it dangerously crushable. I like it a lot. 

There are a lot of NEIPAs that taste more dank, and this one, by virtue of the limited dry hopping, is a little dank^[7]. I don't think I could drink more than three or four before wanting something lighter. But I don't think it's meant for a session even though it is super easy to drink. (Wait. I just checked quickly, and in a few minutes I've drunk half of the can without noticing. So maybe, it's made for an accidental session?).

The beer has a very thick mouthfeel, that is, it coats your mouth like an actual fruit juice. This feeling is reinforced by the low carbonation. I think juicy^[8] is the word I'd begrudgingly use to describe it. 

At this point I decided to have a look at the official tasting notes from the brewery. Apparently I missed the notes of mint. I thought it might be hard to miss the taste of mint in my beer, so I'd better try again. After a very mint-focussed, searching taste of the beer, I still can't find it. A rather sarcastic search party has been dispatched to find the "mint".

Final Thoughts

I really like this beer. Almost to that creepy "sleep outside of its bedroom window kind of way". But not quite all the way. It hasn't disappointed me at all,  and in fact has met my expectations 100%.

Could I recommend it? Yes. It'd be easy to recommend to a IPA lover, because it's fantastic, but on the proviso that it's not the most complex NEIPA on the planet. However it's also not so bitter that you couldn't recommend it to people who like a more easy going light pale ale. It's a great entry level beer for getting into NEIPAs at only 6.5%, and relatively low levels of dankness. All in all, it does a lot to get me excited about Sabro hops making their way into more beers.

The truth is that I expected to like this beer, and I did, but I was hoping to love it. I think I've liked bigger, slightly more elaborate NEIPAs more, but this is a great beer, and I was genuinely disappointed when the can was empty.

I was lucky I only had one can though, as I think I just managed to dodge an accidental session.

Brewery	Cloudwater Brew Co.
Beer	Appropriate Contents
Style	IPA - New England
Alcohol	6.5%
IBU	No IBU
Price	7.49€
Untappd Global Score	4.12
My Untappd Score	4.25

[1] This is definitely a word I didn't make up. It means "feelings of wanting to make a pilgrimage". I absolutely didn't make it up. Fight me. 

[2] Less sessionable was their "Number of the Yeast" at (12% alc/vol), which instead offered "near immediate unconsciousness" through "mercilessly punching me in the brain with alcohol". However, it was my fault for drinking this beer late in a session (please note, I do not condone the irresponsible use of magical fun juice beer).

[3] A radler is just another word for a shandy, except a "Radler" is a "cyclist", and Europeans think a "low ABV beer" is a "sports drink". I could get used to this place.

[4] Into an actual fanboy Cloudwater tasing glass. Yep, I'm that guy, ladies.

[5] A New England IPA (NEIPA) is an IPA which is famed for it's haziness, low bitterness but bold hop driven fresh fruit flavour, and ability to make me party (due to a high average ABV).

[6] Unlike Tori Spelling who never really challenged the popularity of Jennie Garth and Shannon Elizabeth in the saga that was Beverly Hills 90210.

[7] Some people like more "dank" beers, but I don't usually like the dominant taste in my beer to be the same description people use for cellars full of wet newspapers.

[8] Do you remember Juicy Fruit chewing gum? Well, it nothing like that because (a) it is a beer and can't be chewed, and (b) the flavours are very different. I trust this has been helpful.