Review: Shock Top High Voltage

It’s been a decade since we last reviewed a Shock Top beer, a ten-year stretch that has seen the wheat beer specialist undergo a full rebrand/redesign — and now the launch of a wildly high abv bruiser to join the brewery’s collection.

At 9.6% abv, it’s the booziest Shock Top release ever made, essentially the brewer’s wheat-forward answer to an Imperial IPA. High Voltage is an Imperial wheat ale, plumped up with orange flavor and plenty of it. The nose bursts with orange gummy candies, underpinned with fresh wheat bread, buttered just so. The palate doesn’t diverge much, if at all. If anything, it’s even more orange-forward than the nose suggests, the sweetness a pungent powerhouse that almost makes you forget there’s wheat in the recipe. At times it threatens to come off closer to a seltzer — though the chewy, gummy texture of the beer whisks away any such thoughts fairly expeditiously, culminating in a cozy-creamy yet extremely boozy finish. A bit much, to be frank.

9.6% abv.

B / $3 per 19.2-oz can

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