Iron Hops: 450 North Brewing Company Dank Candy – Sticky Bubblegum

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450 North Brewing Company Dank Candy – Sticky Bubblegum American Double/Imperial IPA (8% ABV)

Pour: 16oz can into a snifter

Appearance: Pours a hazy medium-gold color with about an inch and a half of thick, persistent white head. Lots of edging, tons of beautiful lacing.

Aroma: Juicy – mostly grapefruit, but with some piney undertones.

Flavor: A bit sweeter than the other two variations of Dank Candy that I’ve tried. Red grapefruit up front and into the middle, where it takes on an earthier flavor. A sweet/pine combo in the finish that probably shouldn’t work but does. Mildly bitter aftertaste, with a touch of alcohol burn.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, medium carbonation, medium sticky/oily in the finish. This one feels really nice.

It’s 39 degrees up here in South Bend as I’m sitting down to write this week’s column, and there’s a chance of snow later tonight. I may have declared it the beginning of stout season a few columns ago, but this is officially the last of the IPAs in my fridge. I’ll probably be covering primarily darker beers from here on out.

Luckily the last of the summer’s pales is another good one from Columbus, Indiana’s 450 North Brewing’s Dank Candy series. Some readers may recall that this is the third Dank Candy beer I’ve reviewed, and I was pretty impressed by the first two I tried. The Gummy Haze was a pleasantly piney/floral IPA, while the Rainbow Drops was a wonderfully sticky, bitter citrus brew. Sticky Bubblegum, in spite of its name, is actually less sticky than the Rainbow Drops, but it’s no less good. This one seems to be their take on a juicy IPA, but true to form with the series thus far, there’s a fair amount of other things going on here as well. In fact, this is probably the most complex of the bunch, with the fruity notes up front and the piney notes at the end. On paper, it might not sound particularly palatable, but it works very well.

This might be my favorite in the series, but I said that about Rainbow Drops the first time I had that. And with Lollipop Dream, the fourth in the series, just released, I have a feeling it won’t stay my favorite for very long.

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