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I don’t believe in “signs” but this a fun IPA series idea from Chapman Crafted. Pisces pours a hazy light orange. If it weren’t for a bit of wood chip type bitterness, could be mistaken for a witbier. That bitterness grows with successive sips. Getting a bit of peach / apricot aroma. Gives off a little fuzzy feeling in the mouth.
The final lo-cal IPA for February comes from Dogfish Head with Slightly Mighty. The twist here is that the East Coast brewery has added Monk Fruit extract to add sweetness and tropicality.
SM pours a mix of orange and yellow. Getting a little citrus hop nose from it. Stands in the sessionable camp to me rather than watery. Not a lot of spritziness here but it sends a hop message through. It has a good balance. Malt raises a hand, as does some sweetness but the roof of the mouth bitter sticks for a goodly time for a 4% and 95 calorie beer.
I just posted about Smog City Brewing this month and here they are again with another exciting announcement…
…The Smog Days Series “is a line up of ever changing experimental IPAs that will come out about every 60 days.
Batting lead-off is Torrential Hop Pour, “a 6.9% hazy IPA made with Azacca, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops.” Just mark your calendar for every two months.
That is when the Citra rolls in from Kern River Brewing and also…
…a Peak Bagger collaboration with Beachwood. Gonna have to make sure I try their new JoJo DIPA to stay caught up.
Last year brought Double Two Hearted, which was really good and now 2020 brings a throwback to the Cascadian Dark Ale times with a Two Hearts Valentine’s Day brand extension from Bell’s with Broken Hearted. How the honey and extreme hops work with darker malts is to be seen.
There are still days left in the year (nigh decade) but 2020 looms and Ogopogo has an ominous beer for us, ‘Nián Shòu.
Gotta add that Ogopogo is killing the label art game right now. This is one of the coolest designs with all the beer info and backstory easily accessible.
Let’s dive into the second Christmas beer review and we head to another California standard, Celebration from Sierra Nevada. Filled to bursting with Cascade, Centennial and Chinook hops.
Lovely cascading pour. Nice dark red Christmas color. I would classify this more as a red ale rather than Fresh Hop IPA. Big hoppy Cascade hop bite. That lovely hop note really lingers on the palate with a mix of pine and citrus.
I looked through the Best of listed from Craft Beer & Brewing magazines lists (organized by barrel size) and plucked out three breweries to highlight this month, starting us off is Hop Butcher for the World.
Hailing from Darien, Illinois and taking their name from poet Carl Sandburg this brewery which is lauded in the less than 15K barrels category has very distinctive branding.
Here are the beers that I would try first and the hops in each beer for this hop-centric brewery…
Supreme Being Pilsner – Saaz, Select & Monroe
New Oklahoma Pale Ale – Barbe Rouge & Mosaic
Lush Terrain IPA – Mosaic, Wai-iti, Motueka, Waimea & Moutere
Blazed Orange DIPA – Citra & Strata
To DTLA we go for our second holiday beer…
Angel City adds in a pair of off the beaten path items to this new winter IPA.
I have been eyeing the Jamesons whiskies aged in casks formerly home to IPA and Stout but since I am not a big Whiskey person, the prospect of buying a full bottle without a sample first seemed like too big of a flyer.
But, I stumbled across little sample bottles and that was an easy purchase. Of the two, the Stout seemed to have more of a residual beer flavor to it. But if handed both blind, I would have had a really hard time picking which was which.
It is an uncanny valley thing. You know when something looks fake and tastes fake but the closer you get to the look and taste will leave people weirded out even more. I would have needed to get a citrus or pine hop note in the right quantity to have been happy and the same with the Stout, I really needed to have some Black Patent Malt note tucked inside.
For me, the Stout version seemed more on that road than the IPA version but not by a galloping head start for sure.