Review: Obsolete Brewing - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly NEIPA (Be Kind, Rewind Series)

I probably will never tell this story whenever I talk about Dauphin's Obsolete Brewing: I was in Montréal to write about Mondial de la Bière Beer Festival last year and there happened to be a stand dedicated to Canadian beer, and for the first time ever that I know of, they had beer from Manitoba - Dauphin's Obsolete Brewing was being sampled. Being a beer writer right from Western Manitoba, drinking a beer from my neighbourhood only made sense. In the end, Obsolete won an award at Mondial, with almost all the other awards getting scooped up by my buddies over at Avant-Garde (miss you Shawn et Renaud)! I've told this story quite a few times already but it's always worth repeating.

While I was standing outside the booth at Mondial, I was chatting with a group of beer geeks from Vancouver and they were a tad snarky: "why would anyone name their brewery Obsolete, that's pretty much a faux pas!" But in reality the brewery focuses a lot on hobbies/sports/inventions that no longer exist, as well as an entire series called "Be Kind, Rewind" which pays tribute to great movies over the past several decades of all genres. Today's sampling is right from the Be Kind, Rewind catalogue: The Good, the Bad & The Ugly. 

From the can: Are you ready to rewind? This feature NEIPA is nothing short of Good - no bad or Ugly here! You'll get a smooth mouthfeel and an intense combination of hop aromas and low-moderate bitterness. Thanks to the intense hop load of HBC 1019, Sabro and Vic Secrets, this NEIPA will present yellow and tropical fruit aromas. 6% ABV

Appearance: Pours a murky yellow-lemon body with it, very opaque, cloudy and bit of soapy look to it. The head has a good thick of frothiness to begin with, snow white hue. The head diminishes a good deal as I'm writing about this, leaving behind a bit of bubbles on the glass, but not much.

Aroma: As someone who has been tired of NEIPAs for the past while, this one is bringing back memories why I enjoyed the style back in the day - It's a sweet, malt forward IPA with a leafy hop presence it, a lot of lemon that's almost giving off a lemonade vibe to it. A tad bit of sugary candy presence at the end, specifically Rockets candy from Halloween.

Taste: Still has a good amount of sweetness to it - definite tropical notes of pineapple, lemon, as well as a hint of coconut to it. A definite leafy/floral hop presence popping up here and there but predominantly sweet and tropical. Slight creaminess to it, sharp citrus and slight Rockets candy aftertaste.

Overall Thoughts: Solid offering by Obsolete, I absolutely love the Be Kind, Rewind series. I'd love to see a series of Classic Canadiana movies for the series - a throwback oldschool Canadian lager in honour of Strange Brew would be my biggest recommendation.. Canadian lagers are nowhere near like how they used to be even as recently as a decade ago.