Green Flash WC IPA coming this summer to LCBO

JeffPorter · Post by **JeffPorter** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:20 am

Mr.X wrote:I purchased last night despite the warnings - I really wanted to support NAC having the balls to bring it to Ontario - but as stated by everyone already the beer is a total mess. Full of particulate and close to zero hop flavour or aroma.

Funny as I have some Runiation that I purchased in August/bottled in May and was sitting on a warm shelf in upstate New York that while clearly not "fresh" still expodes with hop flavour and aroma. Really makes me wonder what happened to the Green Flash.

Just disapointing all around. Amazing beer brought in only to see it langush in red tape causing it to become less than a shell of its former self.

Ruination will survive anything. A while ago someone bought a bottle at volo from '09 and let me try some, and it was still hoppy - probably not "burn the roof of your mouth off" hoppy, but pretty hoppy.

Belgian · Post by **Belgian** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 11:53 am

Funny as I have some Runiation that I purchased in August/bottled in May and was sitting on a warm shelf in upstate New York that while clearly not "fresh" still expodes with hop flavour and aroma. Really makes me wonder what happened to the Green Flash.

I am no zymurgist, but I wonder if it's just the specific organic chemistry of the two beers. Some IPAs just seem more fragile than others, almost intentionally since it gives that particular hop character.

I'm amazed how well Ruination holds up, but they sure add a lot of hops for your money.

dale cannon · Post by **dale cannon** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 2:36 pm

Belgian wrote:
Funny as I have some Runiation that I purchased in August/bottled in May and was sitting on a warm shelf in upstate New York that while clearly not "fresh" still expodes with hop flavour and aroma. Really makes me wonder what happened to the Green Flash.
I am no zymurgist, but I wonder if it's just the specific organic chemistry of the two beers. Some IPAs just seem more fragile than others, almost intentionally since it gives that particular hop character.

I'm amazed how well Ruination holds up, but they sure add a lot of hops for your money.

Excerpt from an article by Glenn Tinseth in Brewing Techniques, Jan./Feb. 1994:

Once you have achieved the Holy Grail of hoppiness, and the bottle is capped or the keg is sealed, hop character begins its inevitable downhill slide. According to Peacock and Deinzer, the two main ways in which hop oil components in finished beer can be lost are migration into the packaging material and chemical degradation. They write (2),

"The major mechanism for the loss of hop aroma compounds from beer appears to be chemical degradation. The most likely pathways for degradation of terpenoid and sesquiterpenoid compounds are reaction with oxygen in the headspace of the bottle and acid hydrolysis."

They go on to say that bottle cap liners tend to absorb many hop compounds, especially hydrocarbons and longer chain ketones and esters. Hop oil alcohols appear not to be absorbed well by cap liners. Because we can do nothing about acid hydrolysis, this diagnosis points to a rigorous elimination of oxygen from all beer packages and to the use of a nonabsorptive bottle cap liner. Oxygen scavenger caps are available (PureSeal, Zapata Technologies, Hazleton, Pennsylvania), but their performance with respect to absorption of hop oil compounds has not yet been tested.

To look further at the possibility that some beers are more fragile than others, all else being equal (packaging, storage conditions, etc.), some hop flavour and aroma compounds are more or less susceptible to chemical degradation than others. Each beer will have a different concentration and profile of hop flavour and aroma compounds depending on extraction technique, quanity used, hop variety(s) used, etc. And so all else being equal, it is natural to assume that the hoppiness of some beers will be more stable than for others.

heebes · Post by **heebes** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:09 pm

this is an absolutely abysmal ipa here in ontario right now....

figured id at least buy a 4 pack to support the cause and hopefully get a fresher stock in but man, this is gonna be rough. all malty, syrupy, floaties, no hops whatsoever... damn the lcbo and its red tape bullshit

TwoPint · Post by **TwoPint** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:34 pm

heebes wrote:this is an absolutely abysmal ipa here in ontario right now....

I don't know if I lucked out on the lottery but my four-pack was far from abysmal. Over-expensive and not fresh for sure but far from a drain-pour.

heebes · Post by **heebes** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:55 pm

None of the bottles had a date on them. Maybe its an even older boittling than the May one?

MatttthewGeorge · Post by **MatttthewGeorge** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 7:08 pm

TwoPint wrote:I don't know if I lucked out on the lottery but my four-pack was far from abysmal. Over-expensive and not fresh for sure but far from a drain-pour.

Found a single bottle in the $2 bin, which I thought was a steal, and this was my experience as well. Not fresh, bitter without any floaralness and kinda syrupy, but far from abysmal; I drank it all. That being said, I won't be buying a four pack.

cratez · Post by **cratez** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 10:15 pm

TwoPint wrote: I don't know if I lucked out on the lottery but my four-pack was far from abysmal. Over-expensive and not fresh for sure but far from a drain-pour.

Same. Drank my bottles at just above room temp and found them to be hoppier and oilier than anything else in this market besides Red Racer and fresh Mad Tom. Mind you, they came straight out of the case (no St. Lawrence-style warming in the window) and were slightly chilled when I bought them (don't know how since they were just sitting in the back room).

clockwerk · Post by **clockwerk** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 3:12 pm

cratez wrote:
TwoPint wrote: I don't know if I lucked out on the lottery but my four-pack was far from abysmal. Over-expensive and not fresh for sure but far from a drain-pour.
Same. Drank my bottles at just above room temp and found them to be hoppier and oilier than anything else in this market besides Red Racer and fresh Mad Tom. Mind you, they came straight out of the case (no St. Lawrence-style warming in the window) and were slightly chilled when I bought them (don't know how since they were just sitting in the back room).

Agreed. However, although I found it had a ton of bitterness, and was quite oily, the flavour of the hops had disappeard compared to Red Racer, or Smash Bomb or Mad Tom.

At 12.75 a 4 pack, this has no leg to stand on. However, calling it a "drain pour" I agree is truly excessive. It's past its prime, not infected.

strowlands8 · Post by **strowlands8** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:30 pm

Mine tasted fine. Not ridiculously hoppy but I enjoyed as much as most of the IPAs we get here in Ontario.

Also I bought some in Buffalo last weekend, and I thought the stuff I bought at the LC tasted better. That being said didn't see a bottle date on either one.

ErkLR · Post by **ErkLR** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:08 pm

I forgot about this one, but I just saw this that someone posted on the NAC FB post.
http://www.greenflashbrew.com/news-flas ... ontent=268

Bottles without a date may be older than May 21st. I assume this applies more to stuff you may have purchased in the US. Hard to tell if unlabelled bottles in the LCBO shipment were from a bit earlier in May or just problems with the new stamper missing parts of the bottling run.

Belgian · Post by **Belgian** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:20 pm

ErkLR wrote:Bottles without a date may be older than May 21st.

The devil you know. Even though the LCBO is much more officious than efficient when it comes to getting us product, at least we have some idea of when stores get a particular beer and how long it's been around.

American stores might try to sell you LAST year's IPA or Weissbier - the kind of leftover stock which the LC would likely have got rid of.

JeffPorter · Post by **JeffPorter** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:26 pm

Belgian wrote:
American stores might try to sell you LAST year's IPA or Weissbier - the kind of leftover stock which the LC would likely have got rid of.

I find this in Quebec too...A couple of years ago, bought a Vache Folle IPA at Peluso that was over a year old....

spinrsx · Post by **spinrsx** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:28 pm

got a few of these today - there were only 2 bottles sitting on the shelf

I'm willing to look past the date since the LCBO was kind enough to sell them to me as 'DOMESTIC BEER $2.00'

spinrsx · Post by **spinrsx** » Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:36 am

I've had this beer a number of times (never knowing how fresh it was since they only recently started dating the bottles) and the batch from May at the LCBO tastes pretty damn good to me. I'd go as far to say that even in it's current state, it's the best/hoppiest IPA the LCBO has ever had on it's shelves.

Can't wait until this stuff starts coming in fresh. Is the plan for this beer to be a regular listing at the LCBO?