Shade Tree IPA
Crooked Thumb Brewery

 

Flat, bitter, lacks depth

Amber pour with a foamy white cap. This is a thirst-quencher. There's a nice spicy bite here that's refreshingly potent. Citrus, pine and grass come through nicely, providing a dry finish. And the malt serves as a nutty backbone that provides balance and texture. Solid.

Giving every Floridian what they really want, -a shade tree, Crooked Thumb whets the whistle and quenches the thirst with a sensible, classic and timeless taste in an IPA.

Shade Tree IPA kicks off with a common amber and chrome accented pour. Hovering over its foamy eggshell froth flows a familiar citrus scent with hints of potpourri, tropical and sprucy aromatics. The first sip is malty-sweet with hints of caramel, toasty, nutty and honey flavors to suggest something of graham cracker.

But with the malts slowly fading, the hops grow into a fuller and brighter taste of pink grapefruit, orang peel, apricot and mango with a persistent sweet marmalade balance. With the bitterness following, a spicier pine character shows a woodsy, grassy and herbal bite with a long and resinous fade.

Medium bodied and seemingly English-like in its body and malt sweetness, the American hops garner a crisp, refreshing and off-clean taste that trails into a long and spicy bitterness in aftertaste.

 

 

Poured a seethru orange-gold body with minimal head and lace ring. The aroma is soapy, citric, and floral. Smooth, light to medium body with a citric earthiness that is dry and balances with a mild grapefruit like sweetness and is easy to drink.

 

 

 

 

Pours a slightly chill hazed copper with two fingers of sudsy white foam, chunks of lace trailing. Smell: dried mango, grass, pine needles, biscuit. Taste: biscuit, grassy and piney, dried apricot. Medium bodied, creamy and sugary. Minty burps. It's alright. Every upstart Florida brewery made an IPA like this in the last 10 years.

 

 

 

Reviewed from notes. I've had this before, but reviewed on 4/15/17 from a pour at the brewery. Served in a plastic cup during Crooked Thumb's Spring Fest.

A: Hazy gold with a good amount of visible carbonation. A one-finger white head fades fairly quickly.

S: Resinous pine and grapefruit hops. Biscuit malts play a larger role here than some other IPAs these days. An old school East Coast approach perhaps, but appealing still.

T: Largely follows the nose, with the addition of some grassy hops and some metallic alpha bitterness in the hang along with the grapefruit rind flavor.

M: Average body, good carbonation sensation, and alcohol fairly well-hidden.

O: This seems almost identical almost every other decent East Coast IPA in the last ten years. It has a little more bitterness and less dry-hopping than I remember. But certainly not bad.