There is a surprising caramel quality to the nose. Reminiscent of something I would expect from a barley wine, which is unexpected, to say the least. The Handup seems to lack any hop quality at all and that’s disconcerting.
The midrange of this beer follows through on the caramel bit, so that’s nice but the finish is…just all off. I suspect this beer might be stale, if it isn’t outright off. The ending notes have a wet cardboard quality, and coupled with the bittering hops it is hard to get past.
I’m not sure what may have gone wrong here, but something certainly did.
That’s when I look at the date when this was bottled: 8/2/20. I’m drinking this on Nov 5. Well, that certainly lends itself to the idea that this beer went stale.
A pint for Dionysus 