Riverkeeper
River City Brewing Company

Bottle from Main Market. Hazy amber pour, small frothy head. Malt leads the aroma and taste, caramel, toffee notes. Taste brings some of the hops bitterness, but mostly its mild sweetness, malty, caramel notes. Pretty smooth.

Pours a clear dark golden color. There's a 1 finger white head. I really like how the head looks, there's some nice tiny bubbles, and it looks fluffy. The retention is pretty good, and there's some nice lacing on my glass.
I'm getting a nice mango aroma from the nose here, I also get a bit of pine here as well.
Taste - The pine seems to be an up front flavor to me, and it lingers throughout. The mango hits on the back for me, and it's not as strong as the pine, but there. Both flavor profiles work together.
The body is very sticky. The hops really linger in my throat.
This is a very good old school West Coast IPA, and I like it.

an enjoyable and fresh tasting beer, not quite clear and a little dull looking from the tap, although the head is nice and the carbonation is strong. it smells like a solid mix of familiar northwestern hops, piney with some generic sort of citrus bitterness, almost a sappy vibe to it, dank and sticky, but also fresh and kind of clean for how hoppy it is. i like the lesser grain base, not much crystal or toasted grain swirling around in here, its lighter than that, pretty tidy on the fermentation, and with just a little dry cereal character underneath the hops, not a lot to get in the way, its a smart build and it highlights these hops well. this also has a pretty full spectrum hop profile, in that its brightly aromatic and obviously well dry hopped, but it also has some more traditional bitterness on the finish, which has it drinking like the best of both ipa worlds. a crispness is here which i like, wrapped with some minerals in the end, and its dry there too, and without any yeast character in the taste, but some definite body. i could see a critique of this saying its relatively uninteresting beer, but its fresh and well made and i enjoyed it on tap at the brewery, which is a rad place to post up by the way if you havent been there. everything was tasting great when i was in, this one included.

Poured from a 22 ounce bottle into a IPA glass.

Look- Medium amber, above average head retention, average lacing, cream colored head.
Smell- Piney, bready, earthy.
Taste- Pine bomb, not very balanced, bready.
Feel- Medium body, average carbonation.

From an undated 22oz bomber purchased at WinCo. I’m guessing this beer is not retired. Appearance is a very slightly cloudy, copper-amber color. A moderate off-white head dissipates slowly and leaves excellent lacing. The aroma is subdued but has some floral and citrus hop notes. The taste has a nice malt base with mild sweetness. Hop flavors range from floral to some mild citrus.

 

 

32oz "grunt" filled at the River City tasting room at their brewery in Spokane for $4. According to the beer board (should I say "draft board"?) in the tasting room, this is 6.5% abv and is 77 IBUs. The name reflects that portions of the profits made from selling this beer goes to benefit the Spokane Riverkeeper, a non-profit organization that works to mitigate damage to the Spokane River caused by human activity.

Poured a hazy shade of copper, with a half-inch of bubbly beige foam that left quite a lot of spotty foam when it receded.

The aroma is mostly of piney and citrusy hops. There's a little bit of a whiff of some malts but it's way in the background.

Definitely hop forward in the taste. The hops are bitter, piney and citrusy in that order. Midway through the taste, there is a mild, bready maltiness that hovers in the background.

Medium bodied, with an oily, resiny mouthfeel.

This is a pretty decent IPA from a small brewery that seems to still be finding it's feet in a lot of ways. The other two IPAs they had on tap when I had my grunt filled (wow, does that sound like a euphimism or what...) had diacetyl issues this one didn't have. I want to like this brewery, as it's the closest thing I have ever had to a neighborhood brewery, but they really need to work on consistency issues, or they might not make it in the increasingly saturated local brewing scene.