Verdant’s Bloom IPA is a modern take on this classic craft beer style.
Verdant Brewing Co, is based in Falmouth, Devon, in England’s sunny southwest. It’s one of a number of exciting breweries leading the craft beer charge in the UK. Bloom is their solid, archetypal IPA.
While ‘New England style’, smooth, fruity, almost juice-like IPAs (or NEIPAs) seem to be the flavour of the moment, Bloom is a modern take on the classic American ‘East Coast’ IPA, combining pine, fresh citrus and a bitter bite.
It pours a hazy gold with an off-white head, offering no surprises. In fact, if you’re looking for surprises then this is the wrong beer. This is a quintessential IPA. At 6.5% ABV, it’s fairly easy drinking. A sniff gives you the dank grassy aromas from the mosaic and columbus hops, while the first sip offers a slightly syrupy mouthfeel and a tangerine tang. Verdant’s marketing for Bloom proposes blueberry muffin flavours, but a bit of doughiness is as close as I get to anything resembling cake (If you want a beer with a blueberry punch then you need to go all-in with Mikkeller’s SpontanTripleBlueberry).
The blurb on the can also claims liquorice notes, which I thankfully also failed to detect. Liquorice has no place in beer for me. Or on this planet for that matter. But each to their own of course…
In summary, if you like the classic citrus-laden East Coast IPAs, you won’t go wrong with Bloom. It’s a great example of one of the world’s most popular craft beer styles. But blooming marvellous? Not quite.