With a name as bombastic as this you would expect it to be a riot of flavour and panache, but it's less Apocalypse Now and more Tropic Thunder.
It's not terrible, and there are flashes of flavour in the profile, but from a brewery that is renowned for making massive, taste-sensation stouts that knock your socks off, their take on an NEIPA is a little flat.
The can design is a real saving grace, with so much going on on a 330ml can it makes it hard to stay mad at the beer for long and you can quickly lose yourself in the world of the label art.
The aroma is fruity, but there's a resinous side to it too that keeps it from getting too juicy and balances it nicely. The pour is a lovely orange colour that does give off the impression you've pulled the pin out of a juice bomb, those generic fruit aromas pouring forth from the can as your pour.
The flavour is strong alcohol at first, somewhat odd for an IPA which is a style that normally keeps the booziness much more subtle than this. There's a generic citrus flavour that is quite pleasant but it's hard to determine what it actually is. It's a little bitter so I'm thinking there's some grapefruit involved, but then there's an orange sweetness to it too.
The aftertaste brings back the booze, which never really goes away but the other flavours distract you somewhat from it. The booziness brings a slight throat-burn along with a dryness that works well with the piney flavour that's involved too. It's a weird one, not mega-juicy but not devoid of flavour either.
The can does a lot of work on this one, with the busy label bringing a lot to the table in terms of making the beer stand out on the shelf.
The centre of the can is a totem pole that seems to be set in some kind of fiery forest area, with blood-red skies, volcanoes and UFOs all thrown in to make it a label that the more you look at, the more you see.
There's a lot of information on the back but as with all of Amundsen's beers it's in Norwegian ; though there are English translations on things like the ingredients and so on. The brewery logo on the front along with the orange banner along the bottom is typical of their labels and helps ring a recognisable section to a label that is very aggressively bright otherwise.
I picked this one up from the Cleethorpes Tap House and Kitchen, but it seems a fairly popular addition to a lot of craft beer shops. It's tough to track down online, but it's definitely worth checking out your local bottle shop for if you fancy trying for yourself how Amundsen have tackled lighter beers.
