Juice Pants 5: License To Juice
Maplewood Brewery & Distillery

 

650ml bottle, undated but purchased fresh, poured into a Maplewood wide mouth pint glass. Enjoyed on 7.23.17, reviewed from Tasting Journal.

The beer pours a hazy, almost turbid copper color, golden and orange hues with a foamy white head that has modest retention and yields spots of soapy lace. The aroma is great, super hoppy, bursting with citrus and tropical fruits, quite bright with nice sharp pineapple, soft mango, peach skin and papaya that brings out some more floral qualities with a touch of grassy and earthy pine and soft pale dough rests beneath the hoppy surface. The flavors are stellar, so juicy and packed with hoppy goodness. Tangy fresh pineapple, soft peach fuzz, papaya, mango, orange and grapefruit with some floral and dank grassiness and lightly bitter pine keeps this in check and doesn't let the sweetness overpower anything. There is just enough raw doughy malt, pale and soft to keep things relatively in balance, it's a nice flavorful backbone to the beer. The mouthfeel is excellent, coating, juicy, soft and smooth medium body that has just enough carbonation to feel lively but it finishes so smoothly with just a lingering dryness.

Verdict: A sensational IPA from Maplewood, one of the best examples of the New England yeasty IPAs I've tried and so lucky it have it locally made. The balance is great, tons of juicy and fruity hops but it's got just enough grain and earthier flavors to balance it out and keep it fairly bitter. Awesome beer.

 

A great IPA from Maplewood that nails down the New Zealand hops in an honorable way and that doesn't emphasize the sometimes weird melon flavor you get from NZ hops. Delicious. Completely balanced between the juicy-bitter spectrum, not TOO turbid, and dangerously smooth for 7%. Watch out, mate!

 

This is the best Juice pants yet - aroma is just a fragrant bouquet of fruits - orange, pineapple, mango - and the flavor is a nice balance between the fruit forward NE style while maintaining a mild blanked bitterness on the finish. Feel is a bit too thin and lacks the full creamy mouthfeel Id like to see from the style, but otherwise this was really well done.

 

 

 

Tasted in a Spiegelau IPA glass from a 1 pint 6 fl oz bottle on July 16, 2017.