[BEER REVIEW] A Pernicious Hop Bomb from a Gas Station in New Zealand 🍺

The Garage Project started in a former gas station and garage in Wellington, New Zealand, in 2011 by the three mates Pete Gillespie, Jos Ruffell och Ian Gillespie. It wasn't even a micro brewery back then, but rather a nano brewery. The name came naturally due to the history of the facilities, but the name Garage Project is also fitting since they seem to approach the whole thing with a sort of "garage mentality", where they think outside the box and tweak and tune their beers in various clever ways. Today their capacity is several 100 times greater and they surely deserve to be called a micro brewery.

As I said it's an innovative brewery with many ingenious tricks up their sleeves. My favorite from the brewery so far has been Death From Above, an IPA in which they've added mango, chili, Vietnamese mint (hence the morbid name) and lime juice. It was also the first one I tried and it convinced me that I was dealing with an artisan brewery of the very highest class. Day of the Dead is a stout with Aztec chocolate, chili, agave (tequila), and cocoa beans. I have not tried the latter, but I'm dying to (no pun intended).

Garage Project Pernicious Weed

The beer we're tasting today has the sinister name Pernicious Weed. The name supposedly comes from the British reactions when hops were first used in the production of beer in the 1500s. Allegedly King Henry VIII denounced hops as "a wicked and pernicious weed". Besides Nelson Sauvin it has been brewed with a local hops variety called Rakau.

Origin: Wellington, New Zealand
Brewery: Garage Project
Style: DIPA (Double IPA) / Imperial IPA
ABV: 8%
330 ml  can

Appearance: The color is orange-amber and the liquid is slightly cloudy. The two fingers high and nicotine white foam quickly settles down and leaves some residue behind.

Nose: Clear hints of 'new world' hops: lemon peel, tree resin, rubber, lemon juice and orange marmalade. There's also a hint of peach and vanilla. Quite enjoyable.

Palate: Boom! A quite obtrusive and aggressive bitterness with lots of sour-bitter citrus notes. Grapefruit. This is clearly a hop bomb. A thick jam-sweetness with a growing warmth from the alcohol appears. Behind the alcohol and hops there's also sweet notes of overripe tropical fruits such as mango. Rich body.

Finish: The finish is quite dry and bitter and accompanied by notes of lemon / lime, sour candies and a faint note of oil paint.

Conclusion: Pernicious Weed is a quite fruity DIPA with a distinct bitterness and a good but not perfect balance. An old-school DIPA, where the bitterness clearly is in focus, in contrast to the now trendy IPA style that is more juicy, floral and fruity. The hoppiness is at times too much, and I think this one would have benefited from a little more aroma hops. Not as interesting as their other IPA's and DIPA's, but still very good. It deserves 3.8 as a final score.

If you run into a few cans or bottles from the Garage Project don't hesitate to pick them up, it's certainly one of the more interesting breweries out there!

 —  SteemSwede