Hop The Fence
Apex Brewing

Another new beer for me from two of my favorite outfits. This is a very interesting mashup of styles - plenty of sour and just enough tang to keep the tastebuds happy. I get more sour than IPA out of this beer, but it certainly tastes great on this beautiful sunny Monday!

473ml can. This is Bench Creek's version of their collaboration brew with Saskatchewan's Black Bridge, the latter's having come out last month.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly fizzy eggshell white head, which leaves some roiling wavecrest pattern lace around the glass as it lazily subsides.

It smells of soured milk, a musty yeastiness, orange and white grapefruit peel, gritty and grainy pale malt, and some leafy, weedy, and piney green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and crackery cereal malt, lactic acid, some lemon, orange, and generic grapefruit zest, ephemeral yeast, and more zingy floral, piney, and herbal verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its palate-assaulting frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and not particularly smooth, as the hop acridity takes more than a minor tithe here. It finishes trending dry, the hop bitterness really keeping the lingering clamps on.

Overall - I am happy to report that this offering is much more 'IPA' than 'sour', with that kettle lactose thing kept in the distant background. Crisp, and quite easy to put back, I shall enjoy the rest of this while still marveling at how little time it took my son to 'learn' to ride his big-boy bike yesterday.