2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 is a 7% NE-IPA from 2nd Story Ale Works, based in Tokushima, Japan. It’s part of their draft lineup, and as the name suggests, it’s the third in their NE-IPA series. It’s brewed using Pilsner, Pale Malt, Oats, and wheat malt with the hops being Mosaic, Citra, Columbus, Centennial, and Cascade. 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 also contains locally sourced sudachi, a small, round, green citrus fruit of Japanese origin that is a specialty of Tokushima Prefecture in Japan. It is a sour citrus, not eaten as fruit, but used as food flavoring in place of lemon or lime.
2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 Aroma and Taste
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SCREENS!
That’s how 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 was served to me – a hot muddy orange mess of stuff. How the heck do people think this looks “good” or “appealing”? Perhaps the light wasn’t right on this one, but I really didn’t want to drink 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 after getting this. My stomach was already begging me not to drink it but thankfully 2nd Story Ale Works hadn’t gone so far as to add lactose to it. 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 had a strong mango, passion fruit, pineapple, and grapefruit aroma to it, along with a healthy dosing of saltiness too. It wasn’t a chalky salty either, more of a table salt like quality to it.
The body to 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 was nigh on identical to the nose, minus any expected bitterness. The creamy oaty salty body brought lashings of tropical fruits – again mango, passion fruit, and pineapple, but I just couldn’t get the saltiness out of my mouth. Chlorides are added to help the hops “pop” but it seems that 2nd Story Ale Works had used NaCl, aka table salt, rather than the usual CaCl (calcium chloride) which sometimes brings a chalky saltiness to the body. The salt flavour become more potent as 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 warmed up making it less and less drinkable. It finished off with a tropical flourish that was doused with salt.
2nd Story Ne-IPA #3 The Bottom Line
If you have to order 2nd Story Ne-IPA #3, drink it with your eyes closed and quickly before the salt gets you. A shame really as the hop flavour is nice.
2 comments
First of thanks for trying our beer. Still always a surprise when I find our stuff online. Secondly, sorry you didn’t enjoy the beer. The salt is strange and unfortunate. I can tell you that we did not add salt to the beer and this isn’t a comment we have gotten or anything we have noticed up to now. I wonder if it is connected to the appearance. Haze stability is something the industry is struggling with for this style. The best way to deal with it, and the one we prefer, is to sell the beer quickly before the haze generating particles have a chance to settle out. In the US breweries that are making hazy beers with wider distribution are generally moving to less haziness because of the longer shelf life they require. If you had this beer recently then it was probably the final keg out there and was held at the bar for a while before they tapped it. That could have allowed the haze to drop out and meant that the first few glasses would be extra hazy and that haze could have contributed some off flavors. Just a guess and not sure how it would give a saltiness to the beer, but the photo does look to be thicker and hazier than the fresh beer. Wish we could control how long bars hold kegs before tapping them but once the keg leaves the brewery it is tough for us to control of the timing. Hopefully you will get a chance to try one of the future batches when it is fresh. For NEIPA freshness is essential.
Pat,
Thanks for the comment and the feedback. NE-IPA is a tough style to produce well and bars really need to ensure that if they’re buying the kegs, then they’re selling them ASAP. We’ve heard horror stories of some breweries selling their beers to bars in Tokyo, and had the keg sit around for a month or so, thus knocking out a lot of the flavours from the beer. A shame that happens but with so many good breweries in Japan now, it’s often a case of buy the beer, or lose the chance.
While I didn’t enjoy this beer, I did enjoy the milk stout a lot and would happily recommend that to anyone in the future. I’ll keep an eye out for future iterations of the NE-IPA but at somewhere that lists the freshness of the keg and when it was tapped.