Ideal Wave
Other Half Brewing - Center Street

Look - hazy yellow with a nice white head
Smell and taste - easy going juicy lemon grass
Feel - medium light body and lighter carbonation
Overall - pretty nice

A - Pours a hazy gold with a sturdy two finger white head. Tons of soapy lacing.s

S - Aroma is grapefruit, lime, passionfruit and dank hops.

T - The taste is orange juice, grapefruit, white grapes, peach and a bitter resinous finish.

M - Medium body with medium carbonation. Creamy mouthfeel with a nice soft finish.

O - Nice easy drinking NEIPA.

 

16oz can purchased from the fridge as a single for $5.92. Canned 11/26/25, so this is exactly two weeks old.

Look: Quite hazy but it has a bit of translucence and it's not quite opaque. It's a very pale orange color; reminds me of grapefruit juice mixed with a splash of orange juice. There was two fingers of a frothy white head that dissipated to a thin ring. Nice lacing.

Smell: Very strong, juicy citrus notes. Grapefruit up front - lots of aromatic zest and also very juicy. Lime notes are more subtle. I'm getting secondary notes of melon and maybe pineapple? The finish is overall pithy. There's some underlying greenness here too. Green bell pepper notes on the finish.

Taste: This actually falls a bit flat on the palate for me. I was expecting more oomph, more juice. It is tasty and quite drinkable. It does not have much acidity, and with hardly any acidity it tastes like something is missing. The taste is actually growing on me, but I'm not sure why it's not the type of IPA that has strong initial impact on the palate. To me, it seems that the Citra and Mosaic are overpowering the more subtle characteristics of the Nelson Sauvin and Motueka. The whole reason why I picked this up was because of the Nelson Sauvin and Motueka. I also think that it's hard to appreciate so many distinct hop varieties in a hazy IPA like this; they tend to blend together.

Feel: It's soft, appropriately carbonated. Nice mouthfeel.

Overall: To me, this was a bit disappointing. I cherish the NZ hop flavors of gooseberries, passion fruit, white grape and apart from some white grape I didn't get much of the others. If Other Half was trying to create a more "subtle" hazy IPA, I suppose that they achieved that. But I have a feeling that's not what they were attempting to go for here.

From the can:
HOPS: Citra, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Motueka
A hazy IPA brewed with a hand-selected blend of Northwest and New Zealand hops giving notes of lychee, sweet orange, lime zest, and gooseberries.

 

 

 

Cloudy, straw yellow in color. Tight white head. Nose is grapefruity. Taste is as taste, heavy on the grapefruit. Decent bitterness on palate, but not enough.

 

 

 

Tastes like tangerine, grapefruit, pineapple, apricot, passionfruit, lime, musty white grapes, yeast, fruit juice, piney hops, floral notes and some bread crust as it fades. It’s very smooth feeling, low bitterness, with mild carbonation and zero signs of any alcohol.

 

2023-06-04
16oz can served in a big snifter. Can is not dated...it's unlike me to buy an undated IPA unless I have a reason to believe it's fresh, and I don't remember why I bought this. I remember I got it at one of the Bottlecrafts I visited around San Diego a couple weeks ago.

Pours pale yellow, whitish, very murky, light dusty head. Smell is tropical, exotically fruity, lots of citrus pith mixed in.

Taste is similar, mostly bright, with a little bit of an overripe note. Fairly sweet in general to go along with the juicy fruit theme.

Mouthfeel is creamy with a slight grit. Overall, unsurprisingly, it's a good murky IPA.