Cabin Brewing Company / Eighty-Eight Brewing Love Shack (88) – American IPA at 6.8% ABV | 30 IBU (C$4.68 at Collective, 473 ml, packaged on 5-Feb-2021, acquired 10-Feb-2021, reviewed 15-Feb-2021)
Appearance: hazy medium gold with one fat finger of rocky pale ivory head diminishing gradually to a thin cap & ring, minimal lacing. (4/5) Aroma: dank resiny pine, stone & tropical fruit, citrus, oats, wheat. (8/10) Taste: moderate sweet, moderate bitter. (8/10) Palate: medium smooth body, moderate-low carbonation, medium duration finish. (4/5)
(RIGHT) Bookkeeping note: I don’t think I have any particular favourite in these two breweries, and would have to go to my records to determine whether I actually have a historical preference for one or the other. However, in order to avoid any possibility of bias, I made my notes referring to the two simply as “LEFT” (in the ribbed IPA glass) and “RIGHT” (in the smooth one). I looked at the labels only after the fact, to determine which was which. Turns out, “LEFT” is Cabin’s version, and “RIGHT” is 88’s.
The collaboration claims to use the same recipe at both breweries, but I don’t know whether that includes hop ratios or choice of yeast. The commercial description I can find seem to indicate both versions are hopped with Galaxy, Vic Secret, Cryo Mosaic and Cryo Sabro hops. On their web site, I see that 88’s version also includes Mosaic Incognito and Sabro, but Cabin doesn’t have any brewing details so I’m not sure if theirs does as well. Both get less fruity and more dank as they warm, but RIGHT starts off just a hair danker. I’m hard-pressed to detect any other differences between the two (and that’s side-by-side – I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to just from memory or notes). Both have the clean malt base and slightly smooth body that I associate with oats, and I’m halfway convinced I can detect just a touch of wheaty tartness. Gun to my head, I like RIGHT just a little more, but the bottom line is, they’re both fun, NE-style hazy IPAs with a lot of fruit adjunct working well with the underlying hops. (Unfortunately, they’re also both guilty of the egregious sin of putting that stupid fucking song in my head.) (16/20)
8/10 #ryansbooze ryansbooze.com
