Author: yanaminicus

Another “session” IPA and now i’m so proud of myself for knowing what that means! Now that i know it’s designed for drinking at work, i think i need a new job. On the other hand this one introduces a new and mysterious beerword term: 11.5º PLATO. They try to describe it as “how big the beer will be”, but i got 12 ounces, so i figger i’m beating 11.5 plato’s already, and i don’t even know what a plato is. Hah, so there!

No, i’m not as dumb as all that. What they call “bigness” is what i call the “body” of a beer, the sturdiness of the malted beverage indicates how much hoppiness they can cram in there before it starts to separate. Or congeal, or, whatever a beer does when it can’t hold its hops.

True to be called a Session IPA, this is spot on the nose at 4.5% alk, so SN is just squeaking by under the limbo bar here. I like cushions, so i would’ve made it 4.4%, but hey, they do what they want, they have the vats and the permits and licenses.

The color is a nice gold, dark gold, not “straw” but not into amberland. And the body does indeed bear the welts from beating some hearty malts into submission. Great solidity, you can feel it in the mouth and taste it under the hops as well. I like that they were able to do this at 4.5% alcohol and still find room for serious hoppys.

The aroma is a bit reminiscent of a wet dog who’s been rolling in something that was not purely mud, not trying to be insulting here, but it’s a tad like rodent droppings. Luckily, none of that aroma carries over into the taste. The taste is really very excellent. This one’s not going to shake up my Top Five IPA’s, but i do like it very much.

What SN was trying to do here, they pulled off in spades. It’s a low-alk IPA with great body and crafty attention to hops, somehow they knew just how much hops they could plug in here, and they did. It must be that Plato guy who told them. Taste is refreshing, yes, all those flowery words like “tropical ” they use on the label come through. This hop profile is a little less piney and more fruity, less citrusy and more plummy. Nectariney?

A great Summer beer, i’ll put this right behind the Bonobo in 2nd place for a Summer beer. Most of all, i am really impressed by what SN did here. The nose is awful, but the taste is supreme. I have to give this a 7.3 for a body that holds up but is lighter than what my belly craves, and hops that are finely done but lighter than what my tongue loves.

If you are looking for a Summer beer and can’t get the Bonobo where you live, then try for this 11.5º Plato, it should have a wider distribution than Bonobo.

Criminy, Sam. It’s tough to stay mad at you. Don’t get giddy, i’m still pissed about that Grapefruit IPA, and your beers and ales are still on my blacklist until you publicly apologize for it. Except this one, because it’s still one of the Top Five IPA’s. The odd name comes from Sam’s theory that the world’s best hops grow at the 48º North Latitude parallel. So they went from Washington State to SE England to Bavaria, collecting cones, brought them back to Boston, and tossed them around in the test kitchen.

The result is stunning. I mean, this is pretty much the company that invented the craft beer movement, and they’re right out there as far as unselfishly supporting microbrews and folks who are resisting the pressure to sell out to a major commercial crap-beer factory. I’m looking at you, Blue Moon. So Boston Brewing knows what the heck they’re doing in making real beer, and this one is a testament to experience.

Much darker than a pale ale, so obviously the body of this beer is quite capable of floating whatever hops they throw at it, and the blend of shrubberies in this one are excellent. At 6.0% alk it’s not too scary and not too flippant, but i think i’ll go on some more about the skill that made this beer.

The choice of malts was expert, looking ahead to what they intended to do with it, which was to hop it up to the ceiling. It’s almost like the beer underneath the hops was designed explicitly for this purpose, and i’m sure it was. The hops not only go hand-in-hand with the malt, but it’s uncanny, it’s like the blueprint included a hole in the wort where a precisely carved puzzle piece of hops would exactly fit. It does.

At 9.1 my rating places this in the fifth slot of my Top Five IPA’s, it might have been higher if SA had not made that Grapefruit IPA, and it may move higher into the mid-nines if Sam does the right thing and apologizes for Grapefruit IPA. But this is still in the Top 5, although it’s a precarious place as #5 means it would be the first to fall if another stellar IPA comes to light.

“Brewed For Us.” Well, “us” must be grapefruit lovers, because that’s exactly what this IPA smells like right out of the bottle. Dry hopped to reach 65 IBU’s and a bit towards vicious at 7.2% alk, the look of it is a lot towards amber and not so pale. Hailing from Grand Rapids in Michigan, this is a step up from the Founder’s All-Day IPA, and commensurately more expensive.

However, that extra moolah missing from your card all goes towards better beer, and this one is a good investment in personal happiness. Great balance between body and hoppy, and by now you know i love a heavier body in an IP-whatever. No disappointment here. Hops are strong, and the label doesn’t mention it, but deducing from the beer’s name, i’d guess they used the Centennial species of hops, no?

Too alky for a Summer beer, otherwise the taste is g-fruity enough for that job. Label says it’s unfiltered, which is ALWAYS a good sign in an IPA: it means they’re conscious more about the taste than the presentation. And true enough, there are tiny floaty things in there and they taste like hopticles.

I think this is an excellent beer, and the local shop has a few more varieties of Founders stuff. Liked their All-Day IPA, but it didn’t inspire me to try more of their stuff. This does. I don’t think it’s going to dislodge one of the Top Five in the Pantheon of IPA’s, but this has Top Ten written all over my tongue. An even 9.0 is awarded, and hey, i’m not one of those jackasses who levies all ratings within a point of 7 just to be nice.

Take into account that i normally deduct score for high alcohol content, except for double-IPA’s where that’s expected. So in this case, a 9.0 is a very substantial rating. Founders should be proud. You should drink this.

Holy carbonics, Batman! This one wanted out of the bottle so dearly, that it frothed and blew bubbles at me out the top as soon as i got the cap off. Swear i didn’t jostle it and uncapping was easy, not a fight. But then out of the bottle and in the glass, there’s not much head. I don’t know what’s going on with this beer from Hamburg Brewing. Very odd behavior for an IPA.

Oddness abounds. This smells hoppier than it tastes, tastes hoppier than the 55 IBU’s noted on the bottle, and there’s a tree growing in the middle of their “H”. I just don’t know what’s going on around here.

Anyway, we’re at 6.0% alk for this one made near Buffalo, and they claim 4 types of malt to make this beer, and i can tell you the taste of the beer behind the hops bears this out. An interesting mix of barleys at different stages of malthood, leaves some sweetness in the beer and an oatey finish at the end. Like a sour oat. Odd.

The hops are a quartet too: Chinook, Palisade, Ahtanum and Magnum (which is clearly compensating for something). Cloudy to the eye and they call it orange, but what it really is, is two-toned. But two-toned vertically, not horizontally like a normal liquid. Exceedingly odd. The color is certified pale along the sides of the glass, with an orangey core all the way down in the middle of the beer.

This whole beer is simply bizarre. Not troubling, just really weird. Very carbonated in the bottle and in my stomach (had me burping halfway during drinking it), but low head and no streamers of bubbly gases in the glass. Weird.

Honestly, normalcy worries me more than oddity, so don’t let my review scare you off. It’s tasty, and real-beer body which kicks the ass of all rice beers, and the bunches of hops work well here. Medium-strength and that’s nice, all together a fine beer. But nothing outstanding, despite being so weird from top to bottom. I’ll rate this at 6.6

An entrant from the place India Pale Ale was invented, and now that it’s America’s fav crafty, Samuel Smith is bringing it over here. Actually, they’ve been selling this in the States for a long time, i used to pick one of these up now and then in the 1980’s. The tale bears repeating, IPA is top-fermented because you can do that on a ship rolling at sea, and the water in India was sketchtical, and the troops supporting the British Raj needed something to drink. And boats need ballast, my friend, boats need ballast.

So some genius in England in the 1700’s came up with it: for ballast use barrels of water, which will be good to have in India. Then the next lightningbolt intelligent idea: put malted barley and top-ferment yeast in the water, and by the time you get to India, your boat is full of beer! Total genius. But that kind of brew is not too good, not the real deep colour and flavour of a porter, stout, or even a normal English bitter.

The final idea in the recipe was to hop the heck out of it, and suddenly it tastes decent, to a lad raised on English real beer. Soon they discovered that a strongly hopped beer was extra tasty in a hot country, and the legend was born.

No self-respecting English maltophile would consider drinking India Pale Ale, simply because it’s too pale and ridiculously hopped up. But in America, where we were drowned in Bud/Miller/Coors for a half-century, IPA’s taste like an epiphany, a liberation.

So here’s Sam Smith’s entrant, brewed as always in Tadcaster, and just to reinforce quirky Englishness, it’s just India Ale, like they knew it all along you silly colonials. And truly, it’s not really that pale at all. Orange is what i would call it, and the taste profile is more to that colour than yellowy or lemony. 5.0% alk for this, just right IMHO, and hopped like it’s life depended on it.

They only use barley malt, local well water, hops and yeast. One good thing about English beer, is that they don’t have to obey the rheinheitsgebot, but they do anyway because that’s the way to make real beer. I would like to know, when an American beer obeys the German Beer Purity Law. They should put “R” inside a circle, if it would have been legal for them to brew it in Germany. Somewhere on the corner of the label, use a small circled R logo, if it’s only water, barley, hops, and yeast. Maybe someday.

This smells, tastes, and feels like real beer. It’s just a normal English brew, but centuries of experience make what’s commonplace over there, into top-shelf over here. Truly a fantastic IPA, but not a Top Fiver to an American’s tastes. The body is so robust that it could have supported even more hops. A darn good rating of 8.8, but not top form for an American palate.

Another big-brewery beer masquerading as a craft beer, this one brewed in Golden, Colorado. So you know right away who’s behind it. Pretty nice on the nose, and the bottle claims 4 types of hops, so that’s explained. We have little floating specks in there, and it’s actually quite a pale yellow and cloudy, so the name “White” on this IPA is accurate.

The taste is not stellar but very good, as the label admits this is brewed with orange peels and coriander. Odd spices, but not a bad choice, if one had to choose spices which can be put together with 4 hops. 5.9% alk here, and a big Thank You to Blue Moon for putting nutrition info on the label. 184 calories for a bottle.

Good to know, since i just heard a piece on the news about how some craft beers have ridiculous amounts of cals and carbs. Someone’s double chocolate stout, for example, has a nutty 340 calories in a 12 oz bottle. Woof.

On the whole, i like this one. There’s an extra bitterness at the back of the mouth and the beer body is pretty darned light, but the hops are out in front and the ensemble tastes well put-together. Not likely to buy it again, personal tastes run towards a heavier body and prefer the hops to speak for themselves, instead of getting juiced up with fruit rinds and spices.

They did what they were trying to do, even with Corporate Masters overseeing the operation, making a franken-beer with IPA hops and white ale body. Interesting combo, suppose someone was bound to try it eventually, and it’s tasty. I’d rate this at 6.2

This Goosey stuff is one of the false-crafts. Bought out by a gigantic brewery years ago, to give the Gigantor Commercial Brewing Factory a toe-hold in the “craft space”. In this case, Gigantor Brewing means Molson/Coors, and i don’t even think they’re American-owned anymore. I know the other Gigantor Brewing Conglomerate (aka Bud) is owned by a group of suits from somewhere in Europe.

So normally i don’t buy Goose Island or Blue Moon, because they’re not really craft beers anymore. But there was a good deal on a build-your-own-sixer at, of all places, a drug store, and it was a good opportunity to flesh out my experience with some hoppy beers, in single bottles where i would never buy a full sixer.

Thus, a Goose IPA in my glass. Solid and decent, that’s about it. Hoppy, yes, but not ambitiously so. Beer body is pleasant, but nobody’s going out on a limb here, that’s just the way it is with International Corporate Brewing. In the particulars, this is 5.9% alk and packs 55 IBU’s, and they boast that they have an enslav– err, an ‘exclusive’ hop farm all their own.

It’s good beer, no denying that, but i don’t see any reason to buy more of it at “craft” premium prices, when it’s a false-craft with a recipe which seems to be dumbed-down so it could be pumped out with reasonable consistency in Illinois, Baldwinsville NY, and Fort Collins in Colorado.

There is another side to this coin, however. We’re seeing some real craft beers being released where the quality is likely high, but the lack of an “economy of scale” means the price is sky-high. Like, luxury-goods high. There are a few beers i’d love to try, but just can’t pay $25 for a 12-pack. Others, where i simply can’t pay $17 for a sixer. So Big Corp Brewing has an upside: distribution is cheap and large batches lower the production costs.

Don’t know what Goose Island’s IPA tasted like before the buy-out, but right now it’s nothing to write home about, wherever home is for them anymore. Nothing wrong with this beer, it just doesn’t do anything remarkable. Rating, 5.0