On the Wing
Foundation Brewing Company

Welcome to the first (and hopefully only) installment of "Beers I Am Reviewing That I Didn't Check the Date On and Am Now Realizing This Is Old!" Yeah, that's embarrassing. Usually, I'm good at checking dates, but this beer is over three months old and is an IPA, so I'm probably not having it at its peak or whatever. I mostly bought it because the hop combination sounded awesome. I don't really like Azacca (full disclosure), but Simcoe Cryo and Vic Secret seem like they'd be awesome in tandem.

Anyway, this pours a mostly hazy orange color with a moderately-retentive head of bone-white foam that leaves behind a few drips of lace here and there. Not a great appearance, and I can detect some swirls of live yeast in there, just sitting in the body until I swirl my glass to integrate it, which also coincidentally re-rouses the head to a half-finger or so, causing the lace to re-form into some decent web-like patterns.

The nose here is very well-defined... I initially get big scents of passion fruit, papaya, guava, and grapefruit before some notes of apricot, pine, plum, and clipped grass meet in the middle to give off a very broad spectrum of elements that I expect from this hop combo. I am surprised that all of these aspects lived this long and still come out well enough three months into this beer's existence, to be honest. I was trained to believe that hops fall off big time after only a couple months' time, so this is definitely interesting!

I'm a little let down by the palate, which is slightly muted... perhaps the age has gotten to this one more than I initially considered given the nose. Unfortunate, but I still enjoy some of the flavors here... grapefruit, papaya, apricot, tangelo, and grassy pine with some light woodiness to it all. Honestly pretty nice, though probably better at less than a month since package date. Azacca brings out some notes of stone fruit, combining pretty well with the dank and otherwise pungent stuff coming from the other hops here. I hope they brew this again so I can have it a bit fresher, but this seems to be on the right track regardless of its age. Foundation's IPAs are kind of underwhelming to me compared to their local brethren, but this one is definitely one that could be considered good in terms of its recipe. Hope to see it fresh soon!