It’s always nice to have a new craft beer in the Tampa Bay market, but it’s really great when the beer is a highly touted one. Pepin Distributing recently introduced San Diego’s Green Flash Brewing in Florida to overwhelmingly positive reviews. With a solid lineup of beers for every taste, the SoCal brewery is a welcome addition to a growing collection of great beers available in Tampa Bay stores.
Former pub owners Mike and Lisa Hinkley founded Green Flash Brewing Company in 2002 in San Diego, California. The pair was joined by brewmaster Chuck Silva in 2004, when they began brewing “assertive and distinctive” beers that have won numerous awards over the years, including several at the Great American Beer Festival. Their beers are available in better beer stores, as well as craft beer bars around Tampa Bay.
West Coast IPA is a classic example of the style: pine and grapefruit aroma with a beautiful, wispy, pale head, and a beautiful orange-amber color. The mouthfeel is creamy with a medium body, followed by wave after wave of very bitter hops. This beer will sneak up on you. With very little alcohol warmth, the 7.3-percent ABV is well-hidden, so keep that in mind. It pairs well with strong flavors, like a blue cheese bacon burger or spicy curry.
Le Freak is a bizarre blend of a Belgian Trippel and an American Imperial IPA. To call this one “out of the box” is an understatement, as the bold, bitter American hoppiness battles with the Belgian yeast flavors to create something different altogether. Le Freak pours with a very large head and lots of lacing, the color somewhere between light orange and gold. It has a nutty, inviting aroma; not what I expected, given the emphasis on Belgian and IPA styles. Creamy mouthfeel and nutty flavors at first to go with the smell, and then, the bready malt. The hops come to play after, but not as much as I had expected. It ends with a nice, crisp, malt aftertaste. There is a lot going on in this beer; it's definitely not for everyone, but it’s a fun experiment in blending two very different styles.
Double Stout is a delicious take on a classic style. The color is black with a moderately sized mocha-colored head. Aroma is primarily roasted malts, but also has some notes of dark fruit and molasses. Flavor is very roast forward with a lot of milk chocolate, some coffee, and a nice hop bitterness on the finish. Palate is fairly smooth from the oat base, but also has some bite, due to the hops. None of the flavors are overpowering, but Double Stout has a larger hop presence than most stouts, which is a nice change. Do not be fooled by the smoothness, though. There is an 8.8-percent ABV hiding in the darkness that will catch you if you are not paying attention.
Traditionally, red ales do not excite me. But Green Flash’s Hop Head Red is an amazing beer, and my favorite from them. It pours a hazy amber with off-white head, with an incredible aroma of floral and citrus. The beer starts off sweet with a bite, which gives way to the caramel malts. More caramel malt backside and just the right amount of bitterness from start to finish. Medium body with just the right amount of carbonation. From the first sip, Hop Head Red is bursting with every flavor at the same time, floral and pine hops, caramel malt flavors, and is way smoother than the 7-percent ABV would suggest.
This article appears in May 10-16, 2012.