Maine Beer Company Lunch [Beer Review]
If you live in the New England area it’s been hard to ignore the hype around Maine Beer Company’s recently re-released “Lunch” IPA. Our local store, Craft Beer Cellar, got a scant 18 bottles of this beer. In order to help out their more faithful customers they tweeted out a sign-up list for a chance to pick up a bottle. Once on that list it was first come first serve for those who showed up, limit one per person. To those not entrenched in the beer community that must sound like a lot of hoops to jump through, and it would have been if the beer wasn’t very impressive. I’ll jump to it and confirm that all the hoop jumping was totally worth it on this beer.
I could smell the hops as soon as I started pouring the beer into my glass. Strong grapefruit notes came through followed by hints of pine and tangerine. As I put the glass to my lips the hop aroma was so intense that I could taste the beer before it even touched my tongue. As I took my first sip the grapefruit flavors rushed in, but then this beer got surprising. At first sip your month is inundated with hops but just as soon as you think it’s going to be a hop bomb the malt comes through. It has a shockingly clean finish, each sip felt as complex as my first which is really rare with very hoppy beers. I often feel my palate wear down with heavily hopped IPAs but that just never happened. There’s an amazing toasted malt flavor that rounds out the finish, it’s not sweet it’s just smooth and pleasant. The malt character of this beer is what ended up winning me over. It’s relatively easy to create a beer with a ton of hops, it’s much harder to create a beer with lots of hops that feels balanced but not sweet. That balance is what makes this a great IPA vs a good IPA.
My only complaint is that now that I know how good it is I can’t get any more. The next shipment isn’t until December 10th, so for now I’ll just have to wait. If you’re fortunate enough to find some in your area grab it! If you're reading this and you work for Maine Beer company, please make more!
