Ascent
New Trail Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

Undated (WTF) can into pint glass. Pours a very hazy gold with a brief off-white head. Great lacing! Initial impression is juicy mango, caramel, and pink grapefruit. Mouthfeel is smooth and creamy. Finish is fairly sweet, but with the right amount of balancing bitterness. Overall, an excellent NEDIPA from a brewery that does such things extraordinarily well.

 

 

L: pours a creamy hazy orange with about 1 finger of head that fades quickly
S: mango, pineapple, cracker, with a touch of hoppy pine
T: follows the nose. Big time mango is the dominate flavor I am picking up. A little burn at the end but doesn’t detract from the quality
F: slightly creamy, lower carbonation
O: as usual a high quality NEDIPA you can expect from New Trail

 

Poured from a 16 oz can into a Dogfish Head tulip

L: Hazed medium golden pour. Big fluffy head leaves great lacing.

S: Citrus and tropical fruit.

T.F: Semi-sweet to start... grains and tropical fruits. Grapefruit and tangerine... peach, mango, and stone fruit. A bit of spice and tea. Negligible bitterness. Smooth and creamy mouthfeel. Well carbonated.... with more fruit/citrus to finish.

O: Another typical New Trail Hazy DIPA. Great flavor and drinkability... and these beers are pretty much interchangeable.

 

Retired it might be, but with New Trail, who knows for sure. It's the same old New Trail double hazy routine, which never gets old because they excell at it. Basically, it's the same double IPA, hazed by various recipes of barley, oat and wheat malting. By its fluffy white head, reducing unevenly, there's probably too much wheat in the wort. A pint can emptied into a clear glass liter mug is the source of those observations. As the fluffy white head recedes, above a dirty blond colored liquid, it leaves an irregular head and inconsistent leveling. Too much wheat is usually the culprit for these abnormalities. The visual is mitigated by a wonderful aroma. This is sweet and hoppy, yet dry and fresh. The hops aren't washed out by an overabundance of wheat and oats, but they are held in check. The body is excellent, with a great distribution of barley providing a sweet but not overly sweet, solid backbone and oats adding to the body and softening the hop bite. Other than making the head more fluffy, what is wheat doing here? This is another wonderful double hazy from New Trail, with subtleties probably only discernable if the rare side by side comparisons could occur. The overall assessment is that once again, no matter what name is on the label, New Trail continues to produce the most remarkable Double Hazy IPAs outside of Vermont. Ascent registers a 9.2% ABV, which is almost unnoticeable, because of the quality of the brew. They don’t excell at everything, but they're among the best at high ABV Hazy IPAs.

 

I have been relegated to drinking just one (1) beer a day due to my current USPS job, which requires that I work 6 days/week, 10.5 hours/day. I CAN do it & have adjusted nicely (sort of), but I find that it is usually one upon returning home & then off to bed to reChArNge for the next night. Yes, I am working the night shift, but I actually enjoy it! I CAN run a couple/few errands during the day, if I am so motivated & inclined + I really like many of my fellow night shifters where the day people are less so.

I was recently staring into the abysss, I mean, watching a little TV, when I happened to realize that I had a subsCANtial amount of New Trail CANs in abeyance & decided to revisit them for yet CANother brewery horizontal. This shall be the twenty-first of this newest set.

From the CAN: "Ascent Hazy Double India Pale Ale"; "Keep Cold[,] Drink Fresh".

As I near the apex of this Ascent into madness (only a few left in this horizontal), I CAN only reflect on how different each of these have been! There is CAN easy trap to fall into, in which one begins to believe that these New Trail Hazy IPAs are indistinguishable from one CANother & I tell you that such is NOT the case.

I beCAN by Crack!ing open the vent for the start of a steady C-Line Glug into the awaiting glass. I loved watching it foam up to form two-plus fingers of dense, foamy, rocky, eggshell-white head with very good retention, leaving nice lacing in its wake. Color was a deeply-hazy/lightly-cloudy Golden-Amber (SRM = > 5, < 7), orangish in its overall appearance. Nose was fruity, very fruity, ranging from sweet peach to tropical mango to citrusy orange/CANgerine. Mmm. Mouthfeel was full & creamy with a slickness on the tongue from the oats. I was CANurious as to how the mélange of fruits on the nose would play out in terms of its taste. I need not have been CANcerned as it was like liquefied fruit salad with a bit of everything getting its turn while simultaneously appearing in harmony. Each of the aforementioned fruits was discernible while also presenting an amalgamated taste, evincing a masterful use of the available hops. I CAN promise you that it did not taste like any of their other beers, nor did it taste like CANything else in my exbeerience. Finish was semi-dry to dry, lacking enough bitterness to make it truly dry. YMMV.

 

Creamsicle orange and color with a creamy, opaque appearance. Poured with a short, creamy, bright white foam that left sheets of sticky lacings despite the medium low retention. Mellow, fruity citrus and orange aromas with light malty notes. Medium bodied with medium light carbonation. Light creamy feel, a little on the thinner side for a NEIPA, with a pleasant warmth form the middle to the end. Malty and citrus flavors up front with tangerine notes.medium light, lightly earthy and spicy bitterness through the middle. Spicy hops transition to boozy warmth and a solid malty flavors to the end. Finished fairly cleanly for annalee with fruity and light earthy, herbal hop flavors with a malty base. Good look and aromas, feel was a bit thin. Very tasty with a nice boozy kick. This was pretty good.