It has been a bit of a Track weekender, we did a little IGTV sync review of It's All Relative (a pale ale hopped with Nelson and Citra which we rated very highly) and Dan has been reviewing If Not Today (a meaty 11% TIPA hopped with Mosaic, Strata and Galaxy). I have been tasked with giving a run down of this little number.
Brewery
Track Brewing Co
Name
Managing Expectations
Style
West Coast DIPA
Hops
2020 Centennial
ABV
8%
I was looking forward to getting stuck into this three way collaboration between Track, Bagby and Crosby Hops, not because I know much, if anything about Track's collaborators for Managing Expectations, but because, who doesn't love a Track DIPA, and a Westie at that? The problem with beers that you are particularly excited about slurping down is, as the name states, managing your expectations. This is, I think, something I failed to do here.
Managing Expectations is good, great even, let's make that clear up front, but I don't know, I felt a little less than fully whelmed by it. There have been a lot of really positive reviews and at time of writing this is scoring a respectable 4.06 on untappd, all of which led me to think I was in for a flavour bomb and it wasn't really.
There was a slightly astringent quality to this, which was actually pleasant but prevented Managing Expectations from developing into a full on juicy DIPA, the over-riding flavour for me was lemon with a hint of what I will call grape must (if that makes sense?). Underneath the lemon which was simultaneously zingy and pithy, there was a hint of passionfruit which morphed into grapefruit on the tongue and then gave way to a slight bitterness with a hint of hop burn on the finish, but just a hint. However, the bitterness and hop burn did keep developing as I drank and actually became quite pronounced by the end of the can, again something I really enjoyed. But again, I couldn't get super jazzed by this, my palette was crying out for a touch of resin that just wasn't there, which for a west coast DIPA, was a bit of a let down.
What wasn't a let down at all was the colour. As you would expect from the west coast interpretation of the IPA, this was as amber and crystalline as you could want and it held its head all of the way down. But... this didn't make my heart sing. I'm really surprised by this as on paper it ticks all my boxes, its not overly juicy, it has complexity on the tongue, it grows in bitterness, but I still couldn't fall for it. Perhaps that's because this was created through virtual collaboration and maybe something was lost along the way, but I suspect that's not it.
I didn't fall in love with this beer because I really thought I would. I put too much pressure on it to perform, to blow me away, to make my dull Saturday night just a little bit more exciting, and it did all those things, but not as much as I had imagined - how could any beer?
Therefore, it is me who is to blame for me not loving this beer more, it's great, it is amazing actually. Sorry Managing Expectations, it's not you, it's me.
Score - 4.25
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