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Booze Geek Double Feature: Brooklyn Brewery's Quintaceratops And Ninkasi's Tricerahops & Jurassic Park
By Dylan Gonzalez
Beer: Quintaceratops
Brewery: Brooklyn Brewery
ABV: 10.9%
There are quite a few beers out there inspired by the behemoths of the prehistoric age. Arcade Brewery (whose Festus Rot Gut I reviewed earlier) has created the Highly Evolved, an IPA featuring a raging Tyrannosaur on the cover (artwork by Steve Luros Holliday). And Toppling Goliath offers PseudoSue, a beer inspired by the largest and most complete T. Rex skeleton yet found.
Well, for all those T. Rex beers out there, I have gotten my hands on two inspired by the T. Rex's traditional rival, the Triceratops. I present Brooklyn Brewery's Quintaceratops and Ninkasi's Tricerahops.
The Quintaceratops was a dark chestnut brown and produced a small head. It left behind a lasting ring of lacing. It gave off scents of dark fruit, sweet syrup and sugar, as well as traces of rum and bourbon.
Traditionally, Belgian quads a very boozy in nature and Brooklyn Brewery has upped the ante of their Quadraceratops by adding rum to their brew. I noticed more bourbon in the start and that the rum appeared during the mid-palate and was stronger in the finish. There was a lot of candy syrup present throughout and the viscous nature of the beer made it seem like I was drinking straight syrup at times. There was not much burn from the added liquors and the sweetness made it easy to drink.
Now, all that said the Quintaceratops did not exactly blow me away. I found the sweetness to be overpowering at times and overshadowed the other characters of the beer. I think adding the rum and syrup made it just a bit too complicated.
Beer: Tricerahops Double IPA
Brewery: Ninkasi
ABV: 8%
Now, moving onto Ninkasi's Tricerahops, a Double IPA, so pretty far away in terms of similarities to the Quintaceratops.
This beer was amber colored, with an orange hue to it. It created a thinner head and had a long lasting ring of lacing. The beer gave off the scents of Sweet, creamy malt and fruity hops.
I really liked the flavor of the Tricerahops. I detected flavors of the creamy malt with a fruit hop finish. The mid-palate was probably the bitterest part of the beer. The malt presence throughout was very nice and balanced it out nicely. There was a pretty strong carbonation presence, but otherwise it was pleasant to drink.
Overall, this was a delicious beer and it's relative simplicity made it the superior brew. Complexity does not always a good beer make and the Tricerahops came out on top by focusing on its strengths and drinkability.
What To Drink This To:
Dating back to 1925 with The Lost World, when Willis O'Brien brought prehistoric life to the modern age through the use of stop-motion, dinosaur films have captured the eyes of the audience ever since. Due in part to us wanting to know what these creatures would be like if we ever laid eyes on them, dinosaur centric films have populated cinema for decades. It would be difficult for me to list all the good ones, so for the sake of time, I you should revisit Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park remains a staple of lounging cinema for me, something that I have seen probably a hundred times but never grow tired of. The special effects still astound me to this day. Now, Jurassic World, well, that wasn't so good, so I suggest you stick to the original.
Dylan Gonzalez happens to love beer and comic books and luckily found a place to write about both because he has no idea how to actually make money in the real world. He lives in a cave in New Jersey. Tweet him at @BeardedPickle, follow his own beer blog at http://boozegeek.tumblr.com/ or email him at dylan.gonzalez1990@gmail.com.