First Draft: Make The World Better IPA - Spruce Tips
Yards Brewing Co.

Light golden orange in color with excellent clarity. Poured with a tall, sticky, bright white foam with medium retention. Fresh citrus, pineapple and spruce pine aromas with a solid malty base. Medium bodied with medium carbonation. Pine spruce flavors with citrus hop notes beneath. Spicy hop bitterness through the middle. Citrus and minty flavors from the middle to the end. Finished dryly with light spruce and spicy hop notes. Spruce aromas and flavors are well balanced by the citrus hop character. Bitterness level is assertive but does not take away from any the spruce, hop and malt flavors. Thus was easy drinking and very tasty.

 

Color is nothing special. But...
The smells is intense basil and ginger. (2 off my favorite flavor profiles). It smells incredible.
Tastes like good weed. Honestly. Im not much of a pot smoker, but I love the taste/ smell.
Overall, it's a bit all over the place, but in a good way. Very interesting and hard to nail down. I kind of NEED to try it again, just to understand it...

A surprisingly great IPA from Yards. Can dated 10/23, this is definitely a sneaky-good beer. I'm going to give you what I'm tasting in waves:

Wave 1: Spruce, pine, slight citrus
Wave 2: Earth, mint, spiciness, lemon
Wave 3: citrus zest lingering

The interesting thing is how the citrus moves while tasting. Ending on a bitter, dry note also helps that lemon and zest linger after the swallow. The body is medium on the front ending dry and bitter. Carbonation is medium-light and compliments the dry swallow, and the beer looks like a beautiful, clear west coast IPA. Spot on color, decent lacing and retention.

This a really well made beer, and it shows.

 

 

Yards Brewing Co. "Make The World Better IPA"
1 pint can coded "102319 359 0156". Sampled on 110519.
$14.99/4-pack at the brewery on 11/02/19

Notes via stream of consciousness: This beer is brewed with Simcoe hops and locally grown spruce tips and you can certainly taste it. At first I thought it was that garlic and onion note that you can get from Summit hops but then I remembered reading about the spruce tips and wondering how they've kept them as they're ripe for picking in spring - duh, I guess they just refrigerated them. It's poured a clear deep golden / amber colored body beneath a finger-thick head of off-white foam. The aroma is fairly mild for an American IPA, with notes of herbs, some woodsiness and a gently spicy earthiness, and mild citrus over a lightly sweet and grainy malt base. The flavor, however, is much more intense and packed with the spruce flavor. If you've never tasted a fresh spruce tip you probably should try to at some point. Taste it straight, and then make a tea from it as I did earlier this year. Even having done that though I'm not sure of exactly how I'd describe it. And then there are the Simcoe hops which add to the mix, and probably distort what's there a little bit. Let me just go through what I'm finding to give you a better idea: pine/spruce, mint and rosemary mixed, spiciness, earthiness, cedar, berry, orange zest, passion fruit, citrus pith, and dried fruit "leather" (maybe apricot, apple, and peach). A firm bitterness balances it, and it finishes dry, spicy, "woodsy", and earthy but with some of the fruitiness lingering as well. It's an unusual beer, and fairly original, but it takes a little getting used to at first. In the mouth it's decidedly medium in body and gently crisp-then-smooth with a somewhat restrained carbonation that seems to be part of the Yards signature, harking back to their English ale roots. In the end I'm quite happy with this and I'm looking forward to the remaining three cans I have, and maybe picking up some more.
Review #6,771

Purl style beer brewed with rye and orange peel, in collaboration with Connor Barwins charity

imperial pint glass, on draft at the brewery

pale clear yellow golden, foamy white head. mild fruity citrus aroma. mild grainy malt and earthy hops in the taste, a touch of the orange. thinner bodied.