Toppling Goliath X Hops Pale Ale (Orange)

The Toppling Goliath Brewing Company is in Decorah, Iowa. They make not only the best beer in Iowa, but some of the best in the entire nation. This is the last of five releases in their new X Hop series. They will each have a unique color to their label, and each color represents a new experimental hop. They encourage people who try the X Hops beers to provide their input back to the brewery. They will then try to encourage hop growers to grow more of these new hops so as to have more regular production of some of these varieties.  (See Red here and Green here and Blue here and Yellow here). After all five different varieties are released, there is going to be a release of all five together in one Rainbow beer. My brain is already nearly exploding just thinking of that!

The beer pours a gleaming and quite clear copper and amber in color. There is over an inch of off-white foamy head. The aroma is bright and fruity, pineapple and passion fruit, apricot and peach. Later on aromas come through like a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.  The taste is cleanly malty, almost lagerish with its funky note, layered in the fruit, like toast dripping with apricot and peach marmalade, a bit of mango coming in, and then coming on stronger. Then the hops take over and it is tropical fruit with a bit of musk that fills the palate. There is a moderate tangy bitterness on the finish. There is a lingering aftertaste of tart, tangy, bitter citrus zest. It is medium bodied and moderately carbonated. This is delicious, yet confusing, too bad I could only get one bottle.  I need more to make sense of this.

After having had all five (so, so lucky to have gotten all five, please let me get the combined), I would, merely as personal preference rate them as follows:  Green is the clear number one for me, Red second, and the Blue was last.  Orange and Yellow are in a fight for third and fourth place that I don't think I could resolve without drinking them head to head. Keep in mind, rating these is like rating your children, you actually love them all.