Sound Check:

If you’ve been to your favorite craft-beer bar lately and seen a beer from Clown Shoes called Sound Check, you’ve officially been involved in a mass-market social experiment. As the name implies, Sound Check is an experimental beer; Clown Shoes is testing and tweaking a recipe that will eventually be canned and known as Whammy Bar. It is a 6.5% ABV IPA brewed with Galaxy, Vic Secret, and Ella hops. These are all varieties of hops that produce huge bursts of tropical fruit flavors, and if you know the BRC, that is right up our alley.

Since Sound Check is tap-only, I was lead to The Attic on Adams to pick this one up, and boy was it a treat.

Aroma:

As I referenced before, the hops used in Sound Check delivered a powerful tropical fruit punch. Pineapple, grapefruit, passionfruit, and mango, so, so much mango! At one point I had to re-read the description from Clown Shoes to see if this was brewed with mango based on the aroma alone. The closest beer I could compare the aroma to is Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA, only take Fresh Squeezed and take it to 11! It’s super sweet and juicy, almost no malt character at all, and finishes with a tinge of Ruby Red Grapefruit aroma. Make a candle of the aroma, box it, ship it my way, this thing is a winner.

Taste:

I probably looked a little bit crazy trying this beer at the bar, because I made about 5 faces in the matter of 5 seconds. It was almost as if I could taste the individual fruit notes from the hops, like a liquid fruit salad — each flavor was distinct, and each flavor threw me for a loop. Sound Check is mango, followed by tangerine, followed by hints of pine, and finishes with a lingering grapefruit tone. Honestly, I’m shocked that all of these fruity tones come from hops alone, and no fruit additions. At one point, I even made the comment that it reminded me of Juicy Fruit gum, which I think is a first for any beer I’ve ever tried.

The biggest drawback on this beer, for me, was a lingering, harsh bitterness. At first sip, I didn’t notice it was there, but the longer I drank the more it was pronounced. It’s not off-putting enough to drop this beer a whole letter grade, but it was enough to take me out of my tropical hop heaven.

Conclusion:

The coolest thing to me about this beer isn’t the fact that it tastes so great, it’s the fact that it’s only going to get better. This is not quite the finished product (although I’d buy a sixer of it now), it’s going to be tweaked and perfected and released again. I would give Sound Check a 94 as it is right now. Maybe it’s just catering to my taste profile, but it was exactly the type of hop flavor I love in an IPA. I could see that it is a bit on the sweet side, so I wouldn’t mind seeing Whammy Bar having a slightly drier finish. I would also love to see Whammy Bar with a slightly less bitter aftertaste. They need the bittering to keep it balanced, but I trust Clown Shoes to dial this one in and create a complete rock star of an IPA.

Keep your eyes peeled for updates on this one. If you see Sound Check on tap, do yourself a favor and grab a pint. After you do, let us know what you thought in the comments below. Who knows, your comments could help shape the future best IPA in America!

-Cheers.