Its been a decent Saturday, and I’ve been catching up on a lot of the reviews. That made me thirsty to have one, and after dropping the kids off at a couple of birthday parties it was time. My sister went to Nashville and Knoxville Tennessee a couple of weeks ago, and brought back several beers for me. She brought me several growlers, and in order to drink them when they were fresh, I thought I should crack them open soon.
Location: Poured from the growler into a large Sam Adams Perfect Pint glass at my home in Bloomington, IL.
Numbers: Nothing listed
Appearance & Aroma: It’s amber in color and pretty clear. It seems to have a decent amount of carbonation in it, but the head is a thin, creamy and soapy layer a bubbles that barely covers the top. The aroma is a grassy and somewhat earthy hop smell.
Taste & Feel: The body is medium, in the mouthfeel is fairly crisp from the carbonation in it. The crispness makes it hard to distinguish flavors up front, but there is a little bit of malt sweetness and resiny hop flavor. An earthy-grassy hop flavor and bitterness emerges from the crisp bite up front with some malt sweetness in the background. In the finish, the bitterness overtakes everything with a fair amount of spiciness and earthiness, with some grassiness in the back. The bitterness fades in the aftertaste after a minute or so.
Food Pairing: The spicy earthy bitterness is predominant and needs something big to stand up to it like a steak or bbq. It could also go good with a burger with something like a pepperjack cheese on it.
Overall Impression: This is a decent IPA, but it seems to have a lot of bittering hops and not a lot of aroma or flavoring hops. I think it could also use a little bit more of a malt backbone to stand up to all the bittering hops. It was pretty drinkable, and had a mix of hops, but it didn’t have a lot of range to it. Overall, it wasn’t bad, but I’m hoping the Alt she brought me from there is a little bit better.
My Rating: 
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