Tipples Beer Review #51 – Fixation Fix DIPA (Aust)

There is a bottle shop near my house that I like to shop at because it’s close and a has a reasonable selection of beers, but it tends to do weird things, like putting a 14% barrel aged stout in their very limited fridges and then leaving a double IPA on out of the fridge. Repeat with me everyone, IPA’s should always be in fridges.

But this is a great Australia DIPA so even if it wasn’t at it’s best I had to buy it. I know at it’s freshest it’s amazing, repeat after me, IPA’s need to be fresh, this one what nearly it’s best before date. So with a little trepidation I decide to open it.

But let me backtrack in the story of this beer. The beer is kinda of local, kinda not. Fixation is brewed at Stone and Wood in Byron Bay (about 2000km from here) but it is run by a guy named Tommy Delmont, who is a bit of a legend of the Melbourne beer scene, and lives about 3 streets away from me, so as you can see, kinda of local, kind of not.

Tommy is a interesting guy, he worked as a salesperson for Mountain Goat, one of the pioneers of the Craft beer industry in Australia, but when they sold out to international corporate brewers Asahi Tommy was a little upset, he immediately quit and started his own brewery with the help of Stone and Wood (probably Australia’s third largest indi brewer behind Coopers and Gage road), now you don’t get more independant than that.

Tommy know his stuff, so he knows a good IPA takes you a long way, so they started with Fixation and great IPA, then they have seasonal realease, The Fix is one of them – a Double version of the Fixation.

It weights in at 8.2% but you would never know it to drink it (the fixation is the same, it’s about 6.5% and as a number of hangovers taught me dangerous) this is very very pleasant to drink, okay the first few sips are a bit of a shock to the system, but that hop bite not alcohol and then it settles down a bit and you acclimatise.

I’m happy to report that this version of it, although not at it’s freshest is still pretty darn good. The hop characters still shine through, the hops as Mosaic, simcoe and Citra, and it’s continuously hopped, so think something similar to 60 minute IPA from Dogfish head, but for Australians a) available and b) fresh.

So do yourself a favour, next time you see a Fix in the bottleshop bit it up (this applies to Aussies only) or if the idea of a super high hopped big alchol beer in a 500ml bottle scares you, you can try the standard Fixation or even the Obbession their brand new session IPA. Any way you good you won’t be disappointed.

And remember store cool, drink fresh and drink local.

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