Most of All Outa Angst is a straightforward high-end West Coast IPA. Mosaic, Nelson and Nectaron make an accomplished trio - Mosaic for berry and dank resin, Nelson for white wine and gooseberry, Nectaron for a big tropical lift out of New Zealand. Any brewery would be content to stop there.

Green Cheek then added something that is not a hop.

The beer includes what the brewery calls Dank Terps, sourced from Abstrax Hops. Green Cheek describes them as organic compounds made from botanicals that smell like cannabis and hops. The distinction is worth drawing out: these are terpenes, the aromatic molecules that give many plants their smell, isolated from botanical sources rather than extracted from either of the plants they evoke.

That works because hops and cannabis are close botanical relatives, both in the family Cannabaceae, and they share much of their aromatic vocabulary. Myrcene, limonene and pinene turn up in hop oil, in cannabis, and in a long list of unrelated plants including citrus peel and pine. A terpene isolated from a third source is chemically the same compound arriving by a different route.

The practical appeal is control. Hop aroma normally comes bundled with everything else in the cone, so pushing it hard means pushing the vegetal and grassy material along with it. Adding specific terpenes lets a brewer dial up one aromatic note without that freight, which is a useful tool in a West Coast IPA meant to stay clean and bitter rather than soft and hazy.

The tasting notes lean all the way in. Green Cheek describes fresh nugs, grapefruit oil and kiwi, with a lingering note the brewery cheerfully files under the Devil's Lettuce.

Kiwi is the tell that the hops are still doing real work. That is Nectaron territory, and it sits in a different register than the resinous notes around it - a bright, slightly tart green fruit cutting through the dank. Something with a bit of char and fat would suit this: carne asada, or anything off a grill with lime near it.

All Outa Angst is 7.2 percent and available now in four-packs at 18 dollars, alongside Green Cheek's current lineup at its Orange, Costa Mesa, Sunset Beach and Oceanside taprooms.

Editor’s Take

There is something quietly funny about a beer reaching outside the hop cone for a smell that hops already make. Myrcene, limonene, pinene - these are not hop compounds that cannabis happens to borrow, or the reverse. They are ordinary plant chemistry, distributed generously across the botanical world, and the two plants most associated with them in a drinker's mind are simply the two we spent the last fifteen years talking about. Pull them from citrus peel or conifer resin instead and they smell exactly the same, because they are exactly the same.

What I like is the honesty of the move. A brewery chasing this aroma could double the dry hop, accept the vegetal drag and let everyone assume that is just what hops do. Green Cheek instead went and got the specific molecules it wanted and said so on the can, in hand-lettering, next to a skateboarding parrot. Dank Terps is not a euphemism for anything. It is a reasonably precise ingredient label.

As for the name: All Outa Angst is a fine thing to call a beer that has just been dosed with compounds famous for making people mellow. I doubt that is an accident.

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.

All Outa Angst Adds Terpenes That Are Not Hops At All

Mosaic, Nelson and Nectaron do the hop work here, then Green Cheek adds terpenes from botanical sources that are not hops but smell a great deal like them. Out now at 7.2 percent, 18 dollars a four-pack.

Source & Editorial