Even keeled IPA never allows stylishly justified piney fruited bittering to outmuscle caramel-toasted honeyed wheat sweetness. Hard-hitting hopheads may be upset, but others will enjoy less embittered profile. Behind brisk grapefruit peel overtones lie sugar-spiced peach, orange, tangerine and lemon illusions. Dark floral perfumed hops reinforce fresh-watered citric effervescence.
Spirited fruit-juiced front end picks up piney dry-hopped bittering, tart lemon-rotted souring and mild floral perfuming. Ripe apple, pear, peach, grapefruit, mango, kiwi, apricot and orange tang spreads rapidly across musty Czech pils-like malt bill. Lively Northwest IPA re-creates West Coast tropical forestry well.
On tap at Coalhouse Pizza, rigid piney hop pungency and minor alcohol burn embitter prevalent citric fruiting. Up-front orange-peeled grapefruit rind and lemon zest brighten brisk medium body. But tangy pineapple, nectarine and apple subsidy and polite toasted grain malting more common amongst less aggressive pale ales.
On tap at Shepherd & Knucklehead, overly modest citric-hopped bittering remains too mild and murky for stylistic profile. Muted lemon-rotted grapefruit peel entry picks up resinous dry wood tone and wafting perfume tinge above soft wheat-honeyed crystal malting. Slick mediocrity lacks firm body.
Starting as a strong pale ale in its original formulation, newly tweaked 2012 IPA version gets a dry-hopped uplift and bitterer citric presence. Crisply floral herbaceous fruiting given less inviting cardboard-like biscuit malting. Bitter Cascade-hopped grapefruit peel and orange rind astringency contrasts tangy tangerine, peach, pear and pineapple supplement. Slight iodine-like alcohol burn and pungent metallic char singe the bright citric finish.
On tap at Copper Mine, dry medium-bodied West Coast-styled India Pale Ale brings zesty tropical fruiting to dessicated pine hop acridity, tart orange-peeled bittering and dark floral reminder. Biting juniper berry ascension contrasts juicy pineapple, tangerine, peach, grapefruit and lemon tang.
On tap at Copper Mine, interestingly divergent hybridized IPA brings abrupt habanero-peppered burn to overwhelmed up-front citric fruiting, bettering its slim hot-spiced competition. Grapefruit-peeled orange rind bittering that leads the way for the standard Sculpin IPA (plus tertiary mango, guava, pineapple and papaya tropicalia) get whisked away by habanero heat as well as jalapeno chili peppering and phenol capsaicin pungency of deviously peculiar dry-bodied offshoot.
Heightened sessionable medium-bodied IPA overloads woodsy pine bittering atop juicy-fruited expectancy. Tangy tangerine, nectarine, pineapple, apricot, apple, mango and melon illusion further embittered by juniper-soaked grapefruit rind and pungently skunked hop oiling. Ancillary spruce, maple and bark undertones increase woody tangent.
