Garage Project Pernicious Weed

Garage Project are proper famous in the NZ craft beer world for their amazingly hoppy and often left field brews. The epitomy of Wellington craft beer, these guys (running from an ex-garage as in service station) create consistently good and exceedingly hoppy beers. With a range of new and somewhat uncooth beers coming out, you never know what you'll get if you pick up a new garage project brew. Pernicious Weed, however, is one of their original brews that has withstood (is that word?) the test of time, and still appears on supermarket shelves.

The story of how I got this beer is worth a rant. A colleague of mine, who recently moved with her hubby from Scotland (when you read this in your mind's voice please make sure you pronounce Scotland with your best Scottish accent), asked me for a list of my favourite NZ beers, so she could buy some for her husband for Christmas. This (of course) followed with a ridiculously long text about the history of NZ beer and an exhaustive list of NZ beers that I think are important as well as a list of NZ beers that I love with a long list of reasons why. (One on the list was Pernicious Weed...). I finished up work last week, and on my last day, I was presented with a bag full of my favourite NZ beers, and a beatiful card (the details of which I won't go into). The whole thing was an elaborate scheme, which ended up with me getting a whole bunch of amazing beer. What an overwhelmingly good gesture, and with such good rewards!

Back to the beer. One thing I'll point out early, which I actually didn't realise untill well through the bottle, is that this beer is 8.0%, or 4 standard drinks in the bottle. Yeeks. I did feel a little tiddly after it (although it wasn't the first beer of the day). 

The beer is a beatuiful contradiction of delicious. It's smooth and easy drinking, but at the same time heavy and full of flavour. My wife described it tasting like a dark beer, and full of "flavours in the mouth", and even my Father in Law (who is a Heineken man through and through) enjoyed it. It's a true double IPA delivouring a ridiculously massive punch of hops aroma and flavour with a well balanced malt backbone, but somehow it manages to do this while being easily drinkable, and disappearing down the gullet at the same (or quicker) rate than a 4-5% ABV pale ale might do on a warm Summer's day. 

The smell (before-taste) is amazing. The taste is amazing. The after-taste is amazing. It's overall yum, and the kind of beer I'd aim for when brewing a douple/imperial IPA.

As always Garage Project deliver a cool label with a little bit of a back story - that hops were considered a pernicious weed when introduced into the UK...

ABV: 8.0%
Brewery: Garage Project
Region: Wellington
Style: Imperial IPA
Wife check: "If I didn't look it tastes like a dark beer. Lots of flavours in the mouth!"