It’s Friday and it’s time to relax with some drinks! This week, my wife and I engage in a random IPA tasting featuring four beers from four different brewers!
So, please, go get your favorite beverage, sit down, kick back and enjoy as we do our tasting!
Our first beer is…
BEER: Big Daddy IPA
BREWERY: Speakeasy Ales & Lagers – San Francisco, CA
ABV: 6.5%
MATT: 4/5
DANIELLE: 4/5
LOOK: Gold and a bit cloudy
SCENT: Citrus, wheat, hops, malt
MOUTHFEEL/TASTE: Nice ripe orange flavor mixed with a good maltiness with bitter hops which offset everything nicely.
FINAL REFLECTIONS: This is a good, refreshing start to our tasting. I am not sure if we’ve done Big Daddy before. If we have, great. If we haven’t, then it was a pleasure revisiting this beer. Big Daddy is a nice, tasty, sweet, malty beer and everything you could possibly want in an IPA.
BEER: Thick Haze New England IPA
BREWERY: Oskar Blues Brewery – Lyons, CO
ABV: 7%
MATT: 3/5
DANIELLE: 3/5
LOOK: Gold and just slightly hazy
SCENT: Faint orange citrus, not much else
MOUTHFEEL/TASTE: Orange and hops with slightly detectable malt. Light mouthfeel.
FINAL REFLECTIONS: This is almost like a slightly watered-down version of Big Daddy only without the robust approach Big Daddy had. Fortunately, the refreshing nature of this beer saves it from being lower than a “3” for us. The orange is nice and the hops and carbonation are perfect.
BEER: Racer 5 IPA
BREWERY: Bear Republic Brewing Company – Cloverdale, CA
ABV: 7.5%
MATT: 3.75/5
DANIELLE: 3.5/5
LOOK: Copper color and clear
SCENT: VERY slight orange and bready
MOUTHFEEL/TASTE: Nice orange/caramel flavoring and a good amount of hops and carbonation
FINAL REFLECTIONS: “Racer 5” is an oldie, but a goodie. We used to drink this in the old days before this website existed and before we knew anything about beer. It’s nice to revisit some of the old flavors tonight. This beer offers a nice deep orange and caramel flavoring but seems to be missing that malt flavor that existed with Big Daddy. It’s just slightly under that beer, but that’s not a bad thing. We both enjoyed this.
BEER: Hoptologist DIPA
BREWERY: Knee Deep Brewing Company – Auburn, CA
ABV: 9%
MATT: 3.5/5 (changed from recording)
DANIELLE: 3.25/5
LOOK: Copper color and clear
SCENT: Orange, pine, some tropical fruit, wheat
MOUTHFEEL/TASTE: Light fruit flavoring and a fair bit of hops. Can’t taste the alcohol.
FINAL REFLECTIONS: A decent IPA but a little bit less interesting than Racer 5. It doesn’t have near the complexity of that beer but it does stand on its own with some fruit on the tongue and snappy, punchy hops with nail you on the back end.
FINAL THOUGHTS: A solid tasting with Big Daddy winning the night. Overall, we were pleased but we’ve also had better IPAs than this.
HEAR OUR FINAL THOUGHTS!:
NEXT TASTING: We won’t be back on Friday — BUT…stay with us because, starting May 1st, and ending on Cinco De Mayo, we are doing our Five Days of Cinco de Mayo tasting! Join us then!