#500

Nøgne Ø # 500 was brewed as a celebration to their 500th batch of beer. It was brewed using five malts & hops and 2 of the hops are new world funky hops from New Zealand with high alpha acids. The result is an incredibly rich and hoppy Imperial IPA. Malty enough to be almost a barley wine, but intensely fruity, mainly because it is dry hopped with generous amounts of Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand. 

This beer has a reddish brown appearance, more towards amber brown and was quite murky, remember all beers are unfiltered and bottle conditioned. Not the prettiest of DIPA to look at due to the cloudy body but this is long forgotten when one moves on to the aroma and taste. This type of beer I could spend hours and hours just sniffing it, I LOVE the aroma to this beer where it has all my favourite characteristics, tropical fruits, hugs amounts of sweet citrusy fruits, sweet malts, pine and resin. 

Right away one can tell that this beer is highly hopped but also has huge amounts of malts to back this up and the balance is just perfect. The body was sweet, oily and quite meaty with an abundance of exotic fruits bursting out. The sweet malt backbone is very caramel/toffee on the tongue and it is easy to see why many people say this beer is between a very hoppy IPA and a Barleywine. Strong hops presence from beginning to end with strong toffee malt flavour that blends very well with all the hops and both hide the alcohol in this beer very well. 

When I drink this beer it reminds me of Oppigårds Bangalore Twice & Ale Smith IPA, I love this beer and is right up there with my favourite Nøgne Ø beers.