Beer Review: Wicked Pissa IPA

The other day, I bought a variety of beers and other alcoholic beverages. Each of them interested me at the time I bought them - some, because I had had other varieties of the same brand; others, because the product was in a category I enjoy; still others, because the labels were so cool and interesting that I wanted to find out what was locked up behind them.

And then there was this. Wicked Pissa IPA, which I bought solely because it was a novelty.

The label claims all of New England as its turf, but anyone really from New England knows differently. The only place the word "pissah" is used as a descriptive meaning "excellent" is Boston and its immediate vicinity, and there are few things the rest of New England likes less than Boston presuming to know what's good for all of us. Especially when "all of us" means "Massachusetts west of Worcester" (trust me, I grew up in Western Mass, and if there were a way we could form our own state and tell Boston to shove it, it would have been done forty years ago.) Also, notice that I spelled "pissah" with an "H" on the end,  because that's the way it's spelled. goddamnit.

In other words, everything on the label of this IPA points to someone having a shitload of contract-brewed beer to get rid of, so they slapped a misspelled label that sounded "New Englandy" on it and put it up for sale in the Northeast.

But it was still an IPA, and I like IPAs, so I figured the worst that could happen was I'd get to drink an IPA that had a stupid label on it.

Wicked Pissa pours out medium amber with a short-lived white head. The aroma is fairly complex - the usual IPA hoppiness, of course, but also something slightly green and floral. The flavor was dry and hoppy, with just a hint of that floral quality wafting around - a good, bold IPA taste. Unfortunately, there was also a profoundly skunked quality to it that I really didn't enjoy at all. I really can't give it more than about a 3 stars out of 5, and one of those stars is because they were able to induce enough curiosity in me to buy it in the first place.

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