Video by Gabe Pocrass, CTV 11.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a review on a beer called “Pliny the Elder” by the Russian River Brewing Company and I gave it a 9.7 out of 10. To refresh all your memories (not like anybody actually reads these consistently), my friend actually referenced me to the beer and I loved it. While at The Mayor of Old Town this week trying to decide which beer to review, the people at The Mayor said I had to do “Pliny the Younger.” When I questioned why, they told me they’d only have it on tap for the next 40 minutes; I said. “Sign me up.”
This beer is a seasonal beer from Russian River that they only release during the first two weeks of February every year. Right away, it gets sold out by the end of the month. It is extremely rare and extremely good.
Since Pliny the Elder is a Double IPA, Pliny the Younger is a deemed a Triple IPA by the company. I’d never had a Triple IPA before and I was honestly pretty scared. I thought it would be hops, hops and more hops, but this wasn’t like that. It honestly tasted like a Double IPA with a little more saturated flavors, which I didn’t mind anyway.
Pliny the Younger has an ABV of 10.25 percent. It had a nice copper color, which pretty much resembled it’s elder (see what I did there).
As far as the taste went, the main flavor I got was pine. Similar to Pliny the Elder, this pine taste was the main flavor that surrounded the beer’s profile, along with the complimenting malt flavor. Since this beer was balanced really well, the pine and the malts almost seemed to create an Earthy taste; not dirt, but a nice floral taste. In addition to this earthiness, this beer had a lot of appealing undertones as well. The main undertones were citrus, grapefruit, and slowly after I kept drinking it, I got some tropical-fruit flavor, like a passion fruit taste.
Overall, I don’t know how they did it, but I liked Pliny the Younger more than Pliny the Elder. So, I gave it a 10 out of 10! Yes, this is my first 10 out of 10 ever and it seems kind of strange giving a perfect score, but this beer totally deserved it. It was world class. The Mayor of Old Town matched my rating, giving this beer a 10 out of 10 also.
Collegian Beer Reviewer Gabe Pocrass can be reached online at blogs@collegian.com or on Twitter at @Gpocrass.
