The Real Peel Grapefruit IPA
Fernie Brewing Co.

 

 

Look: Pale red-gold color, clear. Pours a light foamy head that collapses into larger bubbles after a couple of minutes and then into a skiff over the surface a couple of minutes after that. A few, large bubbles rising in the glass.
Smell: A mix of yeast, tree nuts, and cottage cheese. There is a faint sharp unidentified smell underneath. Swirling the glass brings out an additional light vegetable and citrus fruit peel pith (not the outside aromatic oils) smells.
Taste: On the bitter side of the spectrum for an IPA. Not much flavor to balance out the bitters, but what there is is far more vegetable than fruit and far more pith than the aromatic part of the peel. Very mild malt that briefly shows up on the palate before being overwhelmed by the bitters. The bitter aftertaste hangs around for far too long.
Feel: Nice level of carbonation that tickles the tongue. Does not explode into foam in the mouth. It doesn't foam up much until it warms in the mouth, but the foam starts quite creamy before turning into larger bubbles.
Overall: This is OK, I wouldn't say no if someone offered me one, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get one either. It would be nice if it had some flavor that comes from the outside of a grapefruit peel than just the bitter white pith. Or grapefruit juice to make it more of a radler.

 

Based on the look and smell I had expectations of the taste that just didn't match.

Pours a light gold with a total grapefruit nose.

The taste is way more vegital than expecting from the nose.

 

 

 

 

 

Fernie Brewing 'The Real Peel Grapefruit IPA' @ 6.4% , served on *cask* at GCBF'16 & from a 650 ml bottle purchased for $6.50
A-pour is a light gold from the bottle to glass with a medium size white head leaving a fine spotty lace along the pint
S-grapefruit
T-floral IPA start , bitter grapefruit peel finish
MF-mild carbonation , medium body
Ov-ok beer
prost LampertLand

 

A lovely, light feeling IPA. This has summer in the Rockies written all over it. FBC continues to impress me with the diversity and depth of their brews. I particularly enjoyed the malt/hop/citrus balance in the Real Peel - definitely the real deal!

 

650ml bottle, part of the brewery's Bucket List IPA series, and touted as their grapefruit-enhanced, late-summer IPA, and the last one for this year, oddly.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow colour, with three fingers of puffy, chunky, and somewhat creamy dirty white head, which leaves some smudged and webbed sudsy lace around the glass as it lazily subsides.

It smells of gritty and grainy, pale and caramel malt, red grapefruit rind, further lemon and orange citrus notes, some hard water flintiness, and more leafy, weedy, and grassy green hoppiness. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, a bit of additional crackery graininess, sort of sedate mixed grapefruit flesh and peel, alcohol-tinged lemon, and more earthy, leafy, and somewhat floral hops.

The bubbles are pretty laid-back in their simple and functional frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, maybe a bit of wayward hops and slowly simmering booziness bubbling up from below. It finishes off-dry, but starting to think about trending towards the former, I suspect - lots of lingering malt and generic juicy citrus still abounding.

Overall, the grapefruit character seems a lot more melded into the citrusy characteristics of the hops, than able to truly stand on its own, which is no biggie, really. An easy to drink, nice and fruity IPA, with a near 13-proof alcohol measure that more or less keeps to the shadows. Yup, this is the 'real peel', ba dum tsh!