Blonde Dads
Cellarmaker Brewing Co.

Poured from a one-liter flip-top growler purchased the evening prior, this blonde exhibits a supremely pale flaxen color, with a very low level of turbidity, along with a very nice quality of picking up any light cast behind it. Nice, bright, clean-finishing, with juicy tropical-fruit florality and bitterness, it's really more reminiscent of some very great XPAs I've had—such as Rustic Road's New Zealand-hopped XPA or Half-Acre's Akari Shogun—and I think obviously benefits from Motueka's uniquely good operation in these supremely-pale, blonde-leaning kind of hoppy brews.

Generally, Blonde Dads is a light, crisp, juicy, strong-finishing beer—perfect for warm afternoons, mornings, or any occasion where heaviness, thickness, or stickiness is undesired. The blonde effort—inasmuch as it qualifies as "a blonde"—really is a bit of a triumph. Only the relatively weak nose—in terms of assertiveness; it actually smells quite good—presents a locus for any bit of criticism, and it's really quite a minor quibble. I liked the Tim's Brown, and really liked the Christopher Riwakan (as well as the tiny taste I had of the Double Dobis), but Blonde Dads is certainly the best Cellarmaker product I was able to try in my visit.