Double Daruma from Montana’s New Hokkaido
New Hokkaido is the brainchild of Gustav Gentaro Dose – the owner of Bozeman, Montana’s Mountains Walking Brewing. I love Mountains Walking…so when I had the chance to try my first New Hokkaido beer, I jumped at the opportunity.
I found their Double Daruma – an amped up version of their mainstay IPA Daruma. Daruma is a West Coast IPA brewed with Hokkaido rice and Strata and Nelson Sauvin hops with a solid 6.5% ABV. However, for Double Daruma they kept most of it the same but bumped the ABV to 8.5% and added a Quantum hop extract from Abstrax post fermentation (which I can say from experience are amazing).
This Imperial IPA poured a slightly copper, mostly golden color with about a single finger of head topping it off. The off-white foam quickly dissipated into a super thin layer across the top of the beer that ended with a small buildup on the sides of the glass.
On the nose it was quite hoppy and bold. There were some big dank notes along with fruitier, more tropical characteristics. It was easy to pick up bold notes of stone fruits along with some tangy pineapple, passion fruit, white grapes, and melon. There was a malty quality from the grist that added some caramel and bready qualities but I wasn’t picking up anything from the Hokkaido rice.
Each sip begins with a hoppy dank bite and a touch of bitterness. The stone fruits – mostly peach and apricot – hit first and hit hard, eliminating that bitterness and replacing it with a sweeter, juicier flavor.
After a moment the peach begins to fade and allows some of the other fruity aspects to start appearing. And it was the zippy pineapple and sweet passion fruit that showed up next, adding a nice fruit cocktail-like quality to the brew.
However, the pineapple also added a slight tangy, tartness to the brew. But, luckily, almost immediately following that was a pop of white grapes – from the Nelson hops – that only lasted for a second or two before disappearing but did enough to quell that acidic pineapple.
Curiously enough, that harsh pineapple did not appear on every sip. You could go two or three swigs with just the juicy, fruitier flavors before that tart and acidic quality reappeared. It was a gamble…but a (mostly) tasty one.
Double Daruma ended mostly clean. There wasn’t too much bitterness or hoppiness at the end but you could pick up the higher ABV there. Even though it was only 8.5%, the alcohol was definitely noticeable for a moment or two at the very end, along with a hint of zesty lemon and pineapple pith.
It was a solid Imperial IPA but not my favorite. The harsher boozy bite at the end, coupled with the dankness, detracted some from the overall taste. I enjoyed how crushable and light it was and, for the most part, the stone fruit flavors were solid but not enough to blow me away.
