American IPA
Granite Mountain Brewing

Unfortunately It’s the only ipa option when I visited. It is remarkably average. It tastes more like a pale ale than an ipa.

 

Poured from a growler into a tulip pint glass.

A: Clear, light brownish-amber color with one finger of diminishing off-white foam head. No lacing remains on the glass and a few diffuse bubbles rise in the column.

S: Weak, slightly meaty, toasted grain and caramel. No suggestion of hops qualities are present.

T: Begins barely off-dry, with pale and crystal malts that are clean in a somewhat simplistic way. Hops flavors struggle to develop into the middle, coming across as vaguely spicy. Bitterness stands out in the finish, tasting of minerals.

M: Thin to medium viscosity, slightly acidic on the palate, with moderate carbonation.

D/O: This is a half-formed and forgettable stab at an IPA, seemingly dialing in from some ancient era of brewing. If this was homebrew it would be ruled a work in progress, with the potential to pay off someday if sufficient and inspired tweaking were performed upon the recipe. At some very fundamental level it resembles Cismontane's Coulter IPA, yet is dumb and mediocre when the Coulter seems clever in a nuanced way. One of the reasons it earns this tangential comparison is its lack of well-developed hops-derived aromatics. The difference here is that this beer does nothing to fill the void left with other interesting qualities.