Jarvis Bay Double IPA
Snake Lake Brewing Company

355ml can - another ode to the central Alberta day-cation destination where this brewery has put down its roots, so named after a man, a local lake's bay, and not after some kid I went to school with a long, long, long time ago, I would imagine.

This beer pours a murky, pale gilded peach colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, loosely foamy, and rather bubbly off-white head, which leaves some stellar broken web pattern lace around the glass as things evenly move forward.

It smells of bready and doughy cereal malt, mixed domestic citrus fruit (of the Yuk-a-Flux ilk), stone paths after a hard spring rain, and more leafy, weedy, and piney green hoppiness. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, some muddled citrus and common melon fruitiness, late-arriving caramel and toffee notes, some flinty stoniness, and more heady earthy, musty, and estery piney hop bitters.

The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-tingling frothiness, the body a stout middleweight for the style, and more-or-less smooth, with little willing to spoil the pre-party going on here, as such. It finishes trending dry, natch, as the hops keep the home fires duly burning (mein Herz brennt!).

Overall - yup, my time away from this platform (and all that infers) has but seen this Wild Rose Country brewery dial in the recipe from the ashes of their heretofore separate 1st Anniversary and tap-only versions (Birthday Suit and Sneaky Snake, respectively). Good on 'em, and I wish them all the best!