Name: Sector 5
Brewer: The Veil Brewing Co. (United States)
Style: Mixed-Style Beer (Base Style: Specialty IPA: New England IPA)
ABV: 12.5%
Review Year: 2020
Sector 5 is a “quintuple dry-hopped Quadruple IPA” brewed by Virginia’s The Veil Brewing Co. originally meant for their fourth-anniversary celebration. This behemoth weighs in at 12.5 % ABV and was dry-hopped with Galaxy, Mosaic, and Enigma hops at a rate of over 12lbs/bbl.
STYLE GUIDELINES
This beer is being evaluated as a Mixed-Style Beer (34B) with the Specialty IPA: New England IPA (21B) as the base style in the context of the 2015 Beer Style Guidelines of the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). The most current version of the guidelines can be found on the BJCP website.
As of this writing, the “Quadruple IPA” is not an official and explicit style in the BJCP; thus, these beers still lack a comprehensive set of style guidelines. For the hazy and juicy variants, these Quadruple IPAs, like Triple IPAs, could simply be bigger-than-triple versions of a New England IPA or Hazy IPA.
TASTING NOTES
Hazy pale gold; thin white head. Sweet powdered orange and mango juice with some alcohol notes. Medium-full bodied; significantly heavier on the palate than the usual New England IPA. Carbonation is still medium with a mouthfeel noted as soft, pillowy, but approaching syrupy. The flavor is prominently orange juice-like but with tea, marmalade, and indistinct spice-like undertones. The sweetness is relatively elevated and reminiscent of an American Barleywine (22C) but with bitterness on the medium-low. Alcohol warmth is subdued at the beer’s colder state but becomes more evident as it settles. The aftertaste: impressions of hoppy bitterness, hints of alcohol, and orange marmalade.
THE VERDICT
Very good. For the obvious reasons, Sector 5 was expected to be much more intense than the average New England IPAs. The intense orange and marmalade flavors demonstrated this. While this “Quadruple IPA” is not yet a sipping beer, we think it is already approaching the American Barleywines thresholds in terms of residual sweetness and consistency. Despite this, the assertive hop characters reminded us that this was still an IPA at its core. Even at 12.5% ABV, Sector 5 was still relatively drinkable.
Recommended Readings:
Flavor Fever: Seeing Through the Haze of Double and Triple Juicy IPAs (Craft Beer & Brewing, 2020)
WTF is DDH? It Depends on Whom You Ask (Vinepair, 2018)
The Beautiful madness of the Triple IPA (Phoenix New Times, 2015)
Is there Such a Thing as a Triple IPA? (Hop Culture, 2017)
