 In this episode of Brutal Battle Beer Break, we're going to be trying a beer by Modern Times. It's a brewery out of San Diego, California. And it's actually the first beer I'll be having by this brewery ever. The beer we have here is called Fortunate Islands. It is a, as you can see, it is a hoppy wheat beer, which I'm not huge into wheat beers but I do like hoppiness and I have had some hoppy wheat beers before and that's how I prefer my wheat beers. So hopefully this is going to be good for me. Let's pop it open. I like that it's in a pounder, as people call it. The big 16 ounce cans, big fan of that. I don't know what it is, cans, I just like the feel of using cans, plus they're just better environmentally, economically, all that stuff, which I'll go into that some other time. Let me turn it so everyone can see. Alright, as we can see, it looks like there's a lot of carbonation. The carbonation, very large bubbles. I don't know, you probably can't pick out the actual bubbles there but you can see that the coloration, it's very orange-ish and it's, can't, you know, I can see right through it but there's tons and tons of fat bubbles. So interesting. Oh my gosh. I didn't even need to get my nose in the actual glass in order to smell the hops as soon as I poured it and got it kind of in the vicinity of my face. I was really getting hops in there. It smells super hoppy. There's a little bit, a little bit of like a caramel-y finish on the nose. Very, actually kind of dank-ish but it's definitely getting kind of those tropical notes, a little guava-y, a little mango-ish. Some orange in there but tons and tons and tons of citrus. It does not smell like a wheat beer, really. I mean, I guess I can smell a little bit of the wheat on the end but it smells so, so hoppy. Okay. Yeah. I can taste the wheat. That's immediately apparent. The citrusiness to it is definitely there as well. It's got a solid bitterness but the bitterness is an overbearing, which I really like about this beer. A lot of those smells I was getting are actually in here. It's a tad bit caramel-y on the finish and I'm getting like the guava, the mango, a little bit of a pine-iness to it but a lot of citrus as well. Like I was saying, some orange. It's more like orange rind to it mixed with the guava and the mango. It's good. That is a nice beer. Some things to say about this. I like on the can, they have a lot of extra information. They have SRM on here on the back, which actually is a standard reference method, which can also be interchangeable with lava bond, which is basically just a way to figure out the coloration of what the beer is going to be like. This one says that the SRM is 4, which if it's low, it means it's going to be very light. If it's high, it means it's going to be much roaster and darker. The stats are very high and things like wheats are very low, so at 4 is where this one is. Then it has the IBUs, the International Bittering Units, which is just how hoppy a beer is. This is at 46, which is pretty hoppy for a wee. They also have the final gravity on this beer, which is interesting to me. I've never seen that on a beer before. I don't know why they're putting it on there. The gravity of a beer is mainly the density of the liquid and that is versus the water content basically. You're really looking at the sugars in there, what the fermentables are. You can use the final gravity versus the original gravity of the beer to figure out what the strength is going to be, like ABV, alcohol by volume, for people who don't know. The hops used in this are listed, Citra and Amarillo. I like that they have that in there. Then they tell you the malts, wheat malt, two-row caramel Vienna. Pretty awesome. Then they have a little write-up on here. It says, does the word wheat on a can of craft beer make you assume it's some insipid macro beer analogue? A tepid entry-level beer that's nice. At best? Well, those would be incorrect assumptions in this case. Wildly, shamefully incorrect. Fortune Islands is bursting with citrusy, tropical hop aromatics because we dry hop the bejesus out of it with citra and amarillo hops. It tastes like wizards. I like that. I'm a Dungeons and Dragons pathfinder nerd, so same wizards on the can is always nice. Then on the side it says, you should totally tinker with the recipe for this beer. It's on our website. Anyone who wants to know, moderntimesbeer.com is their website, so I guess they have the recipe there. You as a home brewer, if you are one, can check it out and brew it up, mess around with it as they say, tinker with it, try some different hops, whatever. This is a nice beer. Citrusy wheat beer. I like it. I'd recommend it. Good foot for modern times to start off on with me. Everyone thank you for joining me again and stay tuned for the next brutal battle beer break.