1635 Tall Buoy IPA
Newburyport Brewing Company

 

From the 16 oz. can dated 07/27/18. Sampled on November 11, 2018.

The appearance is a cloudy looking golden-yellow with a puffy, long-lasting white head.

The aroma is a bit herbal but it is mostly citrus-like with elements of orange and tangerine. White bread.

Medium, smooth body.

The flavor does bring out a more squeezed orange or tangerine character. A mild sweetness. A bigger bitterness. Mildly dry.

Smells a little like black olives, but has a decent piney taste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canned on 10/9/17 opened on 11/14/17

A hazy gold color with orange and white highlights. A very dense, all white sea foam cap holds on tight. Decent lacing, well retained.

A mega sweet fruity hop nose, deep pineapple, tropical juice blend, and a slight, peppery edge. This might be onevof the most sweet-fruity tropical juice hop aroma's. The malt also seems lightbut sweet smelling as well.

The flavor has a very complex fruity hop thing happening, much like the aroma, the hops are pineapple, tropical fruit punch style but with a bigger, earthy, tangy bitter bite than the aroma would lead you to believe. The malt had a pilsner, grainy, light feel and taste but packed with flavor. The malt is the bass and the hops are the guitar attack.

The body and mouthfeel is very complex, a light, malty body, sharp and earthy hop pucker that finishes juicy and rather smooth, never gets cloying or dry. True to it's word: juicy.

Overall, a very interesting New England IPA with a unique hop charecter..?.basically just tropical juice and pineapple, combined with a rather excellent malty flavor makes this unique enough to enjoy thoroughly.

 

 

 

Not really sure what's going on with this 1635 Series overall, but it seems like a fairly new thing for NBPT Brewing. I guess it's like their other local counterpart Riverwalk's "Routes" series of limited/single-batch beer. These guys have been fairly solid for a while now, and it's good to see them branching out into something other than their staple styles. Though I have been a fan of Plum Island White, Green Head IPA et al for years, I am happy to see something like this... a NE-style IPA! Self-aware, hazy and juicy, clocking in at 6.6% ABV and canned on 8/21/17 (about a week and a half ago), I'm expecting a very solid brew here.

Pours a resplendent golden yellow/orange color with very little clarity but just enough character to let light through and make it shine when held up. The head is a few fingers and seems rather retentive, but the lace is really where it's at here in terms of outstanding aspects of appearance. This beer has superb lacing as the head dissipates, with a rather incredible and unusually-consistent sheet of foam that sticks around along the inner walls of my glass. This aspect alone has propelled this brew into my mental list of "best looking beers in recent memory," which is at least moderately-meaningful. Jokes aside, this is a superb looker and makes me even more excited than I already was for what's inside substantially.

Nose is grassy and vaguely tropical with some catty and piney hop notes. I'm not sure what hop varietals were used here, but I can make some vague educated guesses: I'd bet Citra was involved but I could also see something like El Dorado or Azacca having a hand here because of the chalky and undefined vaguely-tropical fruity, ester-y character kicking around. In my experience, these hops can get somewhat lost in recipes with simplistic grists such as this. I get a little bit of tangerine, honeydew melon and a moderately-yeasty "homebrew-y" aspect here but it seems to lack identity overall.

Palate feels kind of similar... chalky yeast combining with simple biscuity and bready malts with a vague citrusy suggestion to bring forward some vestiges of the NE IPA quality I expect. But, as someone who can pretty frequently get stuff from Tree House, this is just strictly under-par... I'm not going to mince words: this isn't high-quality, and could probably be a lot better with a more solid recipe. It absolutely looks the part, but the substance here is under-par. I think the yeast kind of blankets most of the hoppy flavors here, as there is a total dampening effect right after each sip... indeed, I do get some light pineapple and melon flavors with some light citrus, but the whole thing feels homogenized to a net-negative extent. In other words, nothing stands out here.

Feel is rather meh with a one-dimensional yeasty element that nevertheless does a decent job of working with the low-medium carbonation and chewy palate to support the hoppy, moderately-tropical/citrusy elements. I'm not really sold on this one, but the pour really did get me amped up... a bit of a let-down but not a bad beer overall.