APA
Woodhouse Brewing Co.

473 ml can served cool into a pint glass. LCBO purchase for around $3.25 CDN. Canned October 25, 2019.

Appearance - Hazy pale golden straw color with orange highlights. Two plus fingers of monstrous fluffy white head and a great time hanging around. Loads of lacing left behind a great looking beer for sure.

Smell - Citrus notes, orange, and pineapple lead the way with some lychee and melon interspersed. Not a lot else, some vaguely grainy backbone keeps things rolling together nicely.

Taste - Some citrusy hops, grapefruit and orange leading the way and there is a bit of a lack of balance here. Something buttery keeps rolling over my tongue too, it's strange but not unpleasant.

Mouthfeel - Thin bodied, buttery aspect is weird in that in clings to the tongue. Carbonation is appropriate and otherwise no issues.

Overall - A decently brewed APA, but lacking some balance, there's a sense of hop-water here for lack of a better word and the solid malty background that accompanies the best in style is notably muted or absent here.

473 mL can from the LCBO; dated Oct 25 2019 and served slightly chilled.

Pours turbid and translucent, with a golden yellow-hued body capped off by nearly two fingers of puffy, foamy white head. It wilts in less than five minutes' time, but a wide ring of soapy, frothy suds sticks around for considerably longer - as for lace, a narrow band clings to the glass just above the collar, underneath a few further flung strands. The aroma consists mostly of citrusy, tropical fruit-like aromas - I'm getting grapefruit, passion fruit and orange, with hints of berry, stone fruit and a touch of pine resin.

A fairly solid APA - the hop flavours are certainly adequate, but I'm not getting much in the way of malts, save for a gritty, grainy characteristic that mostly gets overrun. Grapefruit, orange and lemon rind come to mind, with lesser notes of passion fruit and apricot also developing by mid-sip. The back end is pithier, rounded out with hints of floral, pine resin-y bitterness that linger briefly into the aftertaste. Light in body, with assertive carbonation that remains prickly and lively well into the course of the glass, giving this brew a palate-scrubbing quality. Good drinkability; a few of these in a row would be no problem at all.

Final Grade: 3.67, a B grade. Much like the other Woodhouse beers that I've tried, I find their APA to be competently brewed, and a good example of its style - though not quite a superlative one, as I wouldn't say it's any better than much of its Ontario-made competition (think stuff like Canuck Pale Ale, Naughty Neighbour, etc.). This pale ale actually drinks rather like a session IPA, with the hops doing most of the heavy lifting, and very little in the way of malt character. That last point is not ideal for an APA, but it's also not nearly enough of an issue to ruin the experience, at least not for me. I could take this one or leave it: I'm sure I'll pick it up again at some point, but probably not on the regular.

Pours a little cloudy with a short-lived beige head. I smell a bit of citrus and a bit of hops. The taste is likewise, with citrus undertones. To me this is more like an IPA than an APA but just my own opinion. Overall this is a good beer no matter what I think it is.
Oct 20 2020