The Trip XVIII (El Dorado Fresh Hop IPA)
New Belgium Brewing Company

Here's another one from Sierra Nevada's Single, Fresh, Wet & Wild festival in Chico, CA. While the BA tug job mentions El Dorado, there is also Cascade hops in here too.

Pours the burnt orange ipa color, not big on clarity, but forgiveness is applicable when dealin with fresh hop beers. 1/3" off white head. El Dorado doesn't seem to add much in the way of aroma, its pretty much grapefruit rind, pear and aspirin for this nose.

The taste gets a bit more involved, that burnt orange body firmly plants its caramel waves of grain here. Still that aspirin and grapefruit rind bitterness going for it. More heft than I prefer in a fresh hop beer. Cascade still seems like the dominant hop on this one even though they pimp El Dorado harder in the marketing angle. Carbonation is fine, alcohol binds with bitterness to make every bit of the 7.2% and whatever the ibu level (60?) perceptible in every sip, but not high enough to talk of it being a legitimate detriment. A decent enough beer that is at the end of the day, a bagged cereal version of SNPA.

 

 

 

 

A - Murky, but bright, copper. Near white full head leaves fast to ring. Lots of cling.

S - Grapefruit first, then comes the malt.

T - Grapefruit, HUGE malty goodness, follow by more grapefruit.

M - Medium body, nice malt coating, good balance and carb.

D - An easy bomber to finish.

 

 

22oz bottle poured into a large mug. Fridge temp. If there's a bottle code, I didn't see it.

Pours cloudy orangey-amber. Medium sized, slightly coarse head. Cloudiness obscures any visible carbonation that might be occurring. Smell is grassy, vaguely citrus, some honeysuckle and flowers.

Taste is more bitter than I was expecting from the smell, but not bad. Not as much of the flowery/honeysuckle character as I was hoping for. Bitterness comes across as lemon zest to me.

Mouthfeel is light and crisp. Overall, this is a quite nice beer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poured into a Seattle Beer Week pint glass. Pours a medium coppery amber with a fine two finger off-white head with great retention and lots of lacing. Nice aroma of tropical fruit, watermelon, grassy hops. Flavor is stone and tropical fruit, grassy and citrus hops. Nice neutral malt body fully supports and displays the hop elements. Medium bodied with light creaminess. A nice addition to the Trip series. These two breweries are good collaborative partners. The malt body shows off the distinctive El Dorado fruitiness and relatively high alpha oils. The addition of Cascade gives a pleasant citrus boost. I really enjoyed this IPA and would get it again if it wasn't a one-shot production.