Uggghh, you've been grocery shopping for what feels like HOURS with your mom. Sure, it was fun to see all the different food - fun for about 10 minutes. Now you're bored to death and getting cranky. Soon your mom pushes the shopping cart toward the front - a sign that your suffering is nearing its end! You somehow managed to stay cool throughout the entire trip, and didn't even entertain yourself by throwing things on the floor or by breaking anything, so your mom says that you can pick out a piece of candy at the checkout. Suddenly, this entire grueling trip has become worth it for that one delectable treat of your choosing! You look over the selection: boring chocolate bars, "old people" candy, mints that burn your mouth, suckers shaped like jewelry or baby bottles - and then you spot it. Before you, glowing with the reflected fluorescent lights of the supermarket lies a bright, multi-colored pack of gum with a cartoon zebra on it. You grab the pack and put it on the conveyor belt. Soon, outside, you break into your treasure while your mom loads up the car with groceries. You pull out a stick (it's your favorite color after all!) and shove the gum into your mouth. WOW! What an explosion of fruit flavors! You can't believe that this gum is so delicious, and that you have AN ENTIRE PACK OF IT! With the boredom of the day's previous events fading from your fruit-blasted memory, you settle in to the car's seat thinking about how well you've got it made. Suddenly, you're shaken from your reverie by the sensation that you're chewing on flavorless rubber. What!? No! How could this have happened? Looking to re-live that life-changing fruit experience you shove another piece of gum into your mouth only to find this time the fruity nirvana you thought you had discovered is just as fleeting as it was with the first piece. You shove piece after piece into your mouth - the wad of chewing gum growing larger and larger. Finally, you reach down for the next piece and find nothing. Could you have really just chewed that entire package of gum!? Maybe you dropped one on the floor? No, nothing there. Could it really be over!? Your mom opens the car door and sits down, finally having finished loading the groceries. You spend the ride home with the flavorless lump of rubber sitting in your mouth - serving as a reminder that the world you're growing up in is dark, and empty.
Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago, Illinois calls Fruit Slave a Double Dry Hopped Double IPA. The bottle states that it is hopped with massive amounts of Mouteka, Citra, and Mandarina Bavaria hops, and the beer's haziness definitely backs up that claim! I've avoided the trend of New England IPAs for long enough, so here comes the "hazy juice".
Fruit Slave pours a hazy, brown-orange color. The beer appears quite thick, and almost milky similarly to coconut water. An ivory froth tops the brew with decent lacing on the glass.
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| A "slam dunk" of fruit flavor! |
The beer's aroma is heavy on the tropical fruit. I'm talking mango, papaya, orange, and pineapple here. The brew smells relatively sweet, but in more of a juice-like way than the normal caramel or biscuit bready scents from malts. There is a slight acidic tang to the beer's smell, which is reminiscent of tropical fruit juices I drank as a younger child.
Fruit slave is medium bodied with a medium level of carbonation. Together, the carbonation and body make the beer seem almost creamy in your mouth. It honestly feels thicker than a Double IPA would normally feel, and somewhat oily. At 7.5% ABV, Fruit Slave seems a bit weaker than I'd expect from a DIPA, but that just means that I can drink more of it!
I'd say the beer is aptly named, as Fruit Slave provides some massive fruit flavors. Similarly to the beer's aroma, tropical fruits are at the front with mango, guava, papaya, pineapple, melon, and orange. A very, very slight pine character seems to add some prickliness to the flavor, and plays well off of the beer's acidic fruit notes. Mild, wheaty malts add a sweetness to the beer, making it take on a character that's even more juice-like.
I had avoided NEIPA style beers for a while because, well, honestly they looked different from what I was used to and sounded sort of silly. I've had quite a few NEIPAs now, and it's been a good lesson to not "knock it before you try it". I've really grown to like the tropical juice flavors that hops impart to beer when brewed in this manner. I can't say that my life is changed and that I only want "juicy" beers from now on, but I definitely enjoy a well made NEIPA quite a bit. Fruit Slave does a great job of showcasing the fruity flavors that dry hopping can produce. You can tell that a huge amount of hops went into this brew. When I had finished my glass, there was literally a thin layer of hop-leaf debris on the bottom. Fruit Slave was definitely a fruit-explosion, but just like that gum from my childhood, the bottle runs out eventually.
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