Railway City Brewing's Double Dead Elephant Ale is an 8 percent double IPA at 104 IBU, built by taking the brewery's flagship Dead Elephant Ale and doubling its hop charge. The rest of the recipe reportedly stays put. Every hop in it is Cascade, Ontario-grown, from a fresh harvest.

The brewery describes a cloudy apricot pour with aromas of pine, strawberry and pear. The flavour is herbaceous with candied cherry underneath, landing on a warming, assertively bitter finish.

The hops

Cascade is a fitting choice here, and not only because it grows in Ontario. It is the variety that set the template for North American hop character - grapefruit, pine, a floral edge - and doubling it at 104 IBU pushes well past where a standard IPA leaves things. The brewery notes that using hops straight off a fresh harvest gives the beer a particularly expressive character, and a mid-September release puts it right against the Ontario picking season.

A beer built this bitter needs food that can hold its ground. Railway City suggests spicy dishes, smoked meats, barbecue, burgers and rich, sharp cheeses, which is a sensible list: at 8 percent with that much Cascade behind it, delicate pairings are going to lose.

Double Dead Elephant Ale is brewed in limited quantities and released once a year.

Where the name comes from

The "elephant" in the name traces back to Jumbo, one of the most famous animals of the nineteenth century. On September 15, 1885, P.T. Barnum's circus performed in St. Thomas, and Jumbo was struck and killed by a freight locomotive while being led along the railway tracks after the show - the same railway history the brewery takes its own name from. Barnum later claimed Jumbo died saving a younger elephant, a story Railway City's own release notes describe as disputed rather than settled fact. The brewery releases this beer on September 15 every year in tribute.

Editor’s Take

Most beers that call themselves 'double' something are a new recipe wearing an old name. This one is not. Railway City took its flagship, Dead Elephant Ale, and simply doubled the hop charge - same base beer, twice the Cascade, 104 IBU. That is a narrower, more disciplined move than a reformulation, and it is the kind of thing you can only get away with when the underlying beer was already built to take it.

Cascade doing the work alone is the other detail worth sitting with. No supporting cast of newer varieties, no cryo, no hop concentrate - just more of the same American classic that taught this continent what a hoppy pale ale smells like. Fresh Ontario-grown cones on top of that, timed to the local harvest, so the one variety gets to show a side of itself a kilned pellet mailed in from March never quite manages.

There is a tribute buried in the arithmetic, too, once you know the beer only comes out one day a year. Somebody worked out that the correct way to honour something famously large was to make the number bigger, not the recipe different. That is a very literal idea, and I mean that as praise.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Double Dead Elephant Ale Hits 104 IBU by Doubling One Hop

Railway City doubles the Cascade hop charge of its flagship Dead Elephant Ale to build this 8%, 104 IBU double IPA: cloudy apricot color, pine and strawberry aromas, candied cherry, a warming, bitter finish. Brewed once a year, all Ontario-grown hops.

The hops

Where the name comes from

Source & Editorial