Cluster 8 was one of the first limited release beers BentSpoke put into cans as part of their Drifter Series; we first wrote about it in 2018. It's a beer that's long had its fans in Canberra and since moving into those tins, theat love has spread across the country too.
It's a beer that rocks a heavy combinatoin of hops including Mosaic, Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial and Citra and it's stuck to its guns over the years too, remaining an unashamedly traditional IIPA as the local beer world has turned to haze. In many ways, it's not far off what Crankshaft would be if everything was turned up a notch or three, or perhaps if that beer was turned into a partial reduction. It's as much about the palate-smothering sticky caramel malts as the dense tropi-citrus hops encased in them like Jurassic Park's mosquito in amber, leaving behind a forest floor like perfume in its wake as it heads towards the thoracic*.
*If anyone would like to suggest some lyrics rhyming Jurassic with thoracic, we're all ears. Literally – they're massive.
Published August 9, 2023 2023-08-09 00:00:00