Tasting Notes: Alesmith: IPA

Alesmith: IPA (USA: IPA:7.25% ABV)

Visual: Amber gold, the head a middling off white, but thick and sturdy.

Nose:  Big chunks of pineapple, slightly resinous. Sharp grapefruit undertones. Wheaty yet crisp. Moderate malt and apricot.

Body:   Pineapple, very solid and dry bitter core. Very dry hoppiness. Very brown bread influenced.   Slight fresh citrus around the edges. When it finally opens up you get peaches, custards sweetness and an understated malt backbone.

Finish: Solid sticky dry hops. Sour dough. Very solid bitterness. Clinging texture.

Conclusion: If I have leant one thing from this beer, its bastard ignore brewers serving advice, they hate you. I don’t know why, maybe they wrote them while they were drunk and it seemed funny.  The shits.

So I took their advice, more fool me, left the sediment in the bottle, chilled the beer just slightly.  Poured it in a pint glass, ok not an “Alesmith pint glass”, but still a pint glass, it counts. What did I end up with?

Well a texture more than a taste is what I got.  The nose was out to fool me, more evidence of Brewery trickery.  It was all, “Here’s your standard American Fruity IPA”, but that aint what entered my mouth.

No what I got was a beer as dry as they could make it feel and as bitter as they could sensibly fit. You can feel the flavours under there, but pretty much you get dry and bitter.  The finish especially leaves your tongue dry and parched.

Any long time readers will know that at this point I was getting ready to rip this beer a new one, I love a bitter beer, but there’s got to be more to it than that.  This thing was eschewing the traditional malt backbone, sweetness, or massive citrus of most takes on ultra bitter IPAs. Without that it comes across lightly dull, especially for a 600ml bottle and high abv.  It just didn’t have the charm to sustain itself.

Then, I thought “sod this noise” poured in the damn sediment, and warmed the thing up. Oh look, there was a decent beer in here after all.  Bit of sweetness added, and a nice peach streak is suddenly introduced. Somewhat hardcore IPA but with less malt and more brutal.  Notable I remembered at this point that the brewers tasting note had mentioned black cherry, and suddenly I tasted black cherry. I didn’t add that to the main tasting as I deeply distrust it when someone tells you they taste something and suddenly you taste it yourself, seems a tad psychosomatic  If only because I have a friend who likes shouting out random oddities during my tasting notes. The git.

Still heck of a hop kick, it isn’t too fancy pants, but I get the feeling that was what they were aiming for and they achieved it.

It’s direct and to the point, and I can respect that, even if I prefer a bit more game to my beers. Oh and don’t chill this unless your in the middle of a heatwave.

Background: Alesmith are a brewery with a big rep, and I got to try their Speedway Stout a while back, which was pretty good.  Id seen their own official tasting details a while ago when I first investigated what this beer was, but with a memory like mine, hopefully that doesn’t make too much difference (notable exception explained in the main body).  Oddly, I broke the pint glass shortly after doing this tasting note. Bugger.  If I gave point scores to beers I’d take ten points off it for sheer spite because of that.  Thankfully I don’t. Rate beer lists this as their highest rated IPA.