 For this episode of Brutal Battle Beer Break, I will be trying a beer by a very well-respected brewery from Santa Rosa, California, which is in Sonoma County, where all the winemaking is, well, Napa and Sonoma there. But it is Russian River Brewing Company out of Santa Rosa. Highly acclaimed brewery, very well known for their sour beers. Also well known for their double IPA, Pliny the Elder. This right here is their regular IPA called Blind Pig, which I've had plenty of the elder actually had one last night. Have not had the Blind Pig yet, so this will be an interesting tasting for me. Anyway, the ABV on this 6.25% alcohol, so pretty typical range for regular IPAs. Let's see. As I'm pouring it, it looks like a very typical IPA. Very orangey. As you can see, very orangey there. On the screen, it appears a little more yellow than it is in real life. So, but you can see there's a lot of carbonation coming up. Hopefully you can see that. Lots of carbonation coming up from the bottom there. Creating a pretty solid head to it. Go ahead and sniff it. Hmm. Yep, getting plenty of hops in that. Little bit of a pine-iness, but of course up front with a lot of West Coast IPAs get a lot of citrus. I get orange. I get orange rind. I get a little bit of a mango-iness to it. Maybe a little guava in there. Smells good. Smells like what you would expect for a West Coast IPA. Nice citrus forward. Man, when I swirl that around, creates tons of head on there. Okay, when I taste it, when I taste it, I'm actually getting like a slight tinge of like a resin-iness on the end that I wasn't expecting because I usually get more of like a resin-iness for like double IPAs, but not regular IPAs. This has a little bit more than I was thinking. Decent amount of malt to balance out all that hoppiness that kind of kicks in towards the end, but up front, I'm getting a lot of kind of what I was smelling in it. You know, the orange, the orange rind, a little bit of that mango, which honestly, when people pick up some piney notes, like slight piney notes in IPAs and double IPAs, if there's mango flavor to it, a lot of the times that's where, you know, those things go together because if anyone's eaten, you know, a fresh mango, it has a little bit of a pine-iness to it. I mean, it's obviously like a citrus-y type vibrant fruit, but it's also a tad bit piney. Mmm. This beer actually has about the exact amount of body to it that you would expect. The flavor is nice and the bitterness is... Try not, I'm trying to put it, it's like a medium, it's a medium bitterness for an IPA, which is pretty much perfect for what I was thinking for it. Love the flavors, the citrusiness is really nice, the mango and the orange and orange peel is good. And like I said, the malt kicking in at the end is a very nice way to kind of balance everything out. I think overall, this is a nice beer. I think I like Pliny the Elder a little bit more, but who doesn't? Honestly, everyone talks about Pliny the Elder, but Blind Pig, very nice offering. I don't think there's any sort of real interesting text on there, except they really do stress on all their bottles, especially with their, excuse me, their hoppy beers like Blind Pig and Pliny the Elder. They say, do not age this, you know, make sure you keep it very cold and refrigerated to preserve the hops, but don't save it, savor it. So I like that message because people need... No, you don't, you should not be keeping very hoppy beers around because it's really going to lose a lot of those vibrant hop notes that make it so tasty. So anyway, Blind Pig, I would highly recommend it if anyone can get it. It's not easy to get. This was compliments of Danny Miller, short for Daniela Miller, contact of mine in California. So thank you very much, Danny, appreciate it. Everyone stick around for the next episode. Thank you for watching.