Category: Beers

“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

Another one of those “session” IPA’s, and darn it, i’m tired of not knowing what that means. Hold on a minnit, let me force the Googer to tell me…

OK, ok. That was easy. Apparently, “session” simply means 4.5% alk or lower, so you can then drink it during your “session” of worktime. 4 hours is a likely “session” so 2 beers at work these days, maybe more in thee olden dayes when people had to work from sunup to sundown. And the low alcohol won’t make you fall over on the job, which bosses always hate. Don’t even ask me to cogitate what the workday beer allowance was before child-labor laws…

So this one fits, it’s at 4.5% alk on the dot. The color is pale, happily golden, and vigorous effervescence makes it a lively brew. The taste, however, is quite light as well. I believe there are hops in this, but they are just not slapping me across the cheek, like a good IPA ought to.

Beer body is heavier than the color would suggest, so quality malts used here, but the hoppiness is more than understated, it’s almost absent. It’s a fine beer, but just not what i’m looking for in an IPA. I want a pinecone shoved up my ass, grapefruit coming out of my earholes. Certainly not a bad beer, but what it is, as opposed to what the label says it is, leaves it at 4.4 for a rating. Sorry, Magic Hat Guys, your #9 rocks, but the Low Key Session IPA is a little too, well, low.

A little different take on the IPA, here’s Magic Hat’s take on an IPA singularity: one hop, one malt. The latter is Vienna Pils malt, the former is Delta hops. And this is one of the Magic Hat brews which they’ve contracted out to the Genesee Brewery, instead of pure Vermont progeny.

Alk content is 5.5%, color is pale sure, but not quite as pale as many. What it does have is a distinctive taste, a lemony hop bitter and serious Euro beer body. It’s that pungent taste, sharp and biting that German beers have, only not as serious as they do it. I like the simplicity here, very citrus hopping and light-ish alcohol make this a great Summer beer. And since MH farmed out production, the price is nice too. Rating it 7.9 for having a plan and intent, and sticking to it.