IPX Single Hop Series: Organic Simcoe
Hopworks Brewery

Hard not to love a single-hop beer from a single farm. Very juicy and perfume-like upfront, while the finish is crisp grapefruit and tangerine. There are light earthy notes and a hint of toasty malts. Overall, a wonderful look at Simcoe.

Nice featuring of the Simcoe. Yet enough malt backbone to provide balanced sipping pleasure. If you're looking for a unique or different taste in an IPA this one would be a good one to try.

 

 

 

Sampled in a flight at HUB in Portland and then a full pint. Easily the best beer in the flight and one of the best single hop beers I've had outside of Lone Pint's efforts. The Simcoe smell is fantastic and the body is well balanced to the aroma. Easy drinking beer and a couple non-IPA drinkers with us even had a pint. Excellent brew.

 

 

An Amber beer with a white head. Nose is all simcoe, the pine is definitely there. You get the alpha level of the simcoe on the first sip with a nice bitterness level. A real nice showcase for the hop.

 

22oz bottle - mine says 'Organic & Simcoe Hops (Salmon-Safe)' a subtle difference, but still. So, Simcoe, eh - should I be firing up the ol' dank-o-meter?

This beer pours a clear, bright medium copper amber hue, with two skinny-ass fingers of puffy, wanly foamy, and mostly just bubbly off-white head, which leaves some disintegrating high-level cloud lace around the glass as things quickly recede.

It smells of yerp - dank pine resin - with a bready, and somewhat doughy pale malt, a tinge of caramel sweetness, a hard water flintiness, and further leafy, weedy, and perfumed floral hops. The taste is grainy, doughy caramel malt, a thankfully lessened dankness in the piney hop readings, some ascending mixed citrus rind bitterness, and once again, more floral, leafy, and lightly boozy hop esters.

The bubbles are nice and zingy in their fizzy and more amenable frothy natures, the body a decent middleweight, and smooth enough, I suppose, as those hops keep their sticky hands to themselves at this juncture. It finishes off-dry, both the fruity hops and lingering malt still jousting with the fading dank and bitterness.

Overall, not a bad display of this particular hop's wares - yeah, there's some musty dank, but it's kept at a relatively low hum, for the most part, allowing some of the other inherent essences to strut their stuff - i.e., generally a mixed-bag of domestic and tropical fruitiness. Not sure where the organic thing chimes in, really, but I suppose that it has integrated itself into the whole, as it were.

Hopworks Simcoe Single Hop Ale from the IPX series. 6.0% abv.

This is a good beer with sweet malt and lupulin hops and a sourness which combined with the orange peel like bitterness resembles the taste of passionfruit. It has a sort of a syrupy mouthfeel but that’s Ok because it’s a good single hop fruity-bitter NW style IPA and this style is not meant for chugging.

It’s a good beer, 4.25/5

 

 

(draft, Hopworks Brewery, Portland 7/11) earthy/hempy, very good and a lot of depth of flavor for just a single hopped beer (3.9).

Others:
Hopworks IPA (favorable)