“CORNE DU DIABLE”, A CANADIAN/AMERICAN IPA

I was gabbing about the beers of DIEU DU CIEL the other night with Brian Yeager, a great American who runs the RED, WHITE & BREWED blog in addition to multiple other beer-related accomplishments. We, like everyone else this year, are pretty psyched about this Quebec-based brewer, and I told him with enthusiasm that I’d recently tried a bottle of CORNE DU DIABLE (“Horn of the Devil”), their “American IPA”. He opined, quite rightly in many respects, “why would I try a Canadian version of an American IPA when I can buy 757 great American IPAs in my own backyard?”. Touché, mi amigo. Yet I would counter with: a border is but an arbitrary boundary. What is important is the taste of the beer, am I right? And on that count, these Canucks have got it going on, just as we thought they might.

CORNE DU DIABLE is a deep, rich, robust IPA. It may be “only” 6.5% alcohol, but it really feels like a big beer from all those intense, full-bodied malts they’re throwing at us. It’s a dry-hopped beer, something of a big red IPA that accents both the heavy malts and the bittering hops in equal proportion. It does not taste like a quote-unquote west-coast IPA, and evinces very little of that fruity, citrus-packed tongue buckling we love to celebrate out here. It’s more bready and malty, with a little caramel in the flavoring as well. Totally into it. I suspect I’m not done with the beers of this brewer and will be consuming more, and reporting to you thusly, in the coming months. 8/10.