Tamarack & Spruce Tip IPA
Yukon Brewing

 

 

Day 6 of the Christmas Advent calendar.
There's no way that this will surpass Day 5's stout, but this was another strong effort.
Nice clear golden color, decent head. Complex flavor of mostly malt, a bit of hops, and sprucey pine notes firing off every once in a while.
D-Lightful.

From the craft beer advocate calendar. Nice collaboration ipa with NWT brewing. The beer is moderately hoppy which allows the spruce notes to rise up as the beer warms. I could drink this quite often as piney notes never overpowers the beer

341ml bottle - day 6 of the 2018 Craft Beer Advent Calendar, a collaboration with NWT Brewing. The spruce tips come from Yukon, and the tamarack from NWT, is how that works.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium golden copper colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some decent splattered snow rime lace around the glass as it very slowly sinks out of sight.

It smells of gritty and grainy cereal malt, some indistinct estery forest floor detritus, muted domestic citrus rind, a hint of black pepper spiciness, and some hard to make out earthy, musty, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is resinous spruce needles, more sort of spicy and peppery tree needles, faint orange and lemon citrus peel, a damp minerality, and more muted leafy, herbal, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-supporting frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and kind of smooth, as the bitterness levels are pretty high, and a tad unforgiving. It finishes trending dry, the green acridity (from hop, spruce, and tamarack alike) predominating.

Overall - well, it seems like they distilled a whole freaking forest into this offering! Hey, I can't fault truth in advertising, I'm just warning you to steel yourself before diving in. And eventually it grows on me (no allegory intended), due in no small part to the expertly integrated extra 2 points of ABV. Good stuff!