Review! Great Lakes Lake Erie Monster IIPA

August 4th is International India Pale Ale Day. I would celebrate it with some tastings down at my favorite local pub but I will be canoeing in the wilds of Canada, where the beverage of choice is high-proof vodka. I am reviewing Great Lakes Brewing Co's Lake Erie Monster instead. I picked up this beer at a drive-thru beer store and it made my day.

I'm still working on the photography.

The head on this beer is beautiful: it pours thick and creamy and persists to the bottom of the glass. It  a golden amber color with a reddish tint - much like bow rosin. Lots of haze in this unfiltered monster. 

 

The smell that comes off has some fruityness and pine.  I can only describe it like a grapefruit, pomegranate and fig had a three-way and their spawn moved in with a pine tree. The beer volcanoes in heaven smell just like this.

Tasting starts off with the piney, works its way to some carbon dioxide spicyness with some sweet malt undertones and finishes with the alcohol heat and some more pronounced sugars. As it warms the aroma and taste take on a more orangey character, tasting sweeter relative to the bitterness of the hops. Which is saying a lot because this is one hoppy, bitter beer. It takes a bit of thinking and swishing to reveal this  because the bitterness is fairly balanced against the malt profile, letting the hop flavor and aroma profile shine. The alcohol is only noticeable at the end of the taste, which is pretty astonishing for a beer that's 9.1% abv. By taste I would have pegged it at around 7-8% but there is so much hops and malt that you don't notice it until you go to pour yourself another.

I've been savoring this beer for the past 30 minutes and it still has a beautiful layer of foam on top with enough carbonation to keep the beer popping in the mouth. Overall this is a solid IIPA, very hop-forward but not too bitter with a very American flavor profile. My only regret is that it's available May-July and I only picked up one four-pack.

Review! Smuttynose IPA

Decided to restart bloginating. Tonight I'm going to try reviewing a beer my wonderful fiancee picked out for me, Smuttynose's "Finestkind" IPA.

Apologies for my poor photography skills, the only digital camera I have right now is the webcam on my MacBook and it's hard to angle shots well.

The beer pours perfectly, I got a good half inch of head off that stuck around a bit. It's a reddish amber color, hazy with a little bit of sediment. I got a faint whiff of citrus from the pour. Grapefruit aroma is definitely present when you sniff the beer, this is an Amurrican IPA. This is good because the beers I've been drinking lately have been a little lacking in the hop character and I could use some bitter in my life. The first sip is a piney, grapefruit ambrosial experience that mellows into the malty backwater flavors of the beer, along with a not unpleasant alcohol burn. It's hard to forget this is a 6.9% ABV (alcohol by volume) but this doesn't detract from the hop-forwardness, just livens up the tongue for the next sip. As the beer warms the malt flavor starts to drown out the alcohol, which is nice. This is a little less balanced between hops and malt than I'm accustomed to, but the hops are balanced within themselves so the bitter is not overpowering and there's a full spectrum of hop flavors.

Overall, Finestkind is  a quality American IPA, no surprises, no flaws and a good way to spend an evening