Mad Fat! Fluid

The details: Interboro Spirits & Ales Mad Fat! Fluid IPA, 7% ABV, 33 IBU, served in a pint can

This month I'm going to finally get around to doing a series of reviews I've thought about doing for quite a long time. I've even used the topic I'm doing this month as a way to pick random beers at the store. 

You've all been there. You're walking past the cold beer case, staring at a huge section of macro brewed American beers. There's a section of craft bottles and cans, but they're usually off at the end somewhere. It's a never ending fight for shelf space between the hundreds of IPA's and the hundreds of cans of cheap adjunct lager. It's a tough decision - go with something new and untested, or something tried and true?

Then it catches your eye: interesting design. There's something different about the label on that can, and you can't put your finger on it at first glance. You buy it, bring it home, and win or lose at the very least you've got something to look at.

The first in this series is Mad Fat! Fluid from Interboro Spirits & Ales (not influenced on my visit there yesterday). The label for Mad Fat!, which seems to be a variable line of IPA's for Interboro, caught my eye immediately. It's three colors, a deep blue with a bit of gray in it, a big stripe of orangey-red, and white. It's three layer - blue/red/blue - and the layers aren't symmetrical which helps draw your eye down the can. The name takes center stage in the center of the red stripe, so it's a success in the "easy to find without your glasses on" department.

However this label isn't perfect. It's a train wreck of typefaces for one thing, as there's at least four or five different ones and those even have different weights and italicizing. They try and mitigate the fonts by trying to keep them separate by color stripe, but it's still a lot to navigate. Something else that bugs me but likely isn't fixable is that the label doesn't line up with the opening in the top, so the logo is just to the right of the opening. The label is also ever so slightly crooked, but I only noticed that because I'm examining the damn thing.

The IPA inside is very solid. It's the opposite of the label; the label feels very more is more, and the beer is very less is more. It's medium citrusy with a nice pine aroma. It's a little crisp but not so much it tastes like pepper, which makes it easy to drink. It doesn't leave that weird tongue coating that some citrus IPA's can, and drinks cleanly. 

If I gave some notes on the label, I think I'd try and at least reign in on some of the different type weights, as that really feels like the most distracting part. Other than that, keep your eyes open for this one - you certainly won't miss the name of it on the label.

The verdict: 4.25 out of 5 (on Untapp'd - follow me @slownumbers to see what I'm drinking!)