Name: Bridge Road Brewers Bling Bling

Style: Double IPA

Country: Australia

ABV: 8.5%

Beer description: Bridge Road Brewers come out of Beechworth, Australia. They started with the Bling IPA, and pushed it up to a double IPA with the Bling Bling! It’s got more malt and more hops in it to make it a step beyond its smaller cousin.

The head on this beer died down very quickly; it would have been nicer to see it maintain for a little while longer, especially since the head can often help with aroma. The beer is coppery and rusty in colour, and it’s starting to push brown. This happens as more malt is added, and this one has a lot packed in!

Biscuit and malt come through in the aroma. There’s hops in there, but more would be expected, and it’s actually nice to have a malt driven aroma in a double IPA for a change. After all, IPAs aren’t all about the hops, they’re also a pretty malty beer too! However, there’s plenty of hops in the aroma: primarily citrus, stone fruits, earth tones, and maybe a bit of gooseberry. Spice mingles throughout this which stings and opens things up a little too.

This beer is nice and thick up the front, and ever so slightly sour. It’s actually difficult to tell whether it’s a sour sensation, the carbonation, or the alcohol playing a few tricks, but there’s some nice playfulness on the front of the tongue as this beer goes down.

Being a very well hopped beer, there is bitterness in the front as well. This shoots on through the middle and into the end. There’s a little bit of sweetness throughout this beer that manages to stick around along with the bitterness. The other surprise about this beer is that it’s a relatively wet finish. It finishes with some earthiness from the hops, but, given the amount of alcohol and the hops, a hard, dry finish would be expected.

The not-so-dry finish is, as with the rest of this beer, great. Bridge Road Brewers have manager to pack a lot into this beer while also keep it pretty balanced and very easily drinkable. Too bad it’s so alcoholic, otherwise a few of these could go down.

Check out more double IPA reviews.

See other reviews of Bridge Road beers.