Amplifier
Tonewood Brewing - Barrington

 

Tonewood Brewing "Amplifier"
$10/32 fl. oz. crowler fresh from the brewery

Notes via stream of consciousness: I got some beer splashed on my hand as I cracked open the can and instinctively licked it off - citrusy! That's not surprising though, I think it's brewed with Mosaic, Simcoe, and Idaho 7. It's poured a cloudy golden orange and it looks like a glass of orange juice with a short head of creamy white on it. The head retention doesn't seem very good though as it's already dropped. There's a solid ring of lace where it was though so that's good. It certainly smells citrusy. It's citrusy and sweet though, not sharp or brash. I'm finding it fruity (mango, papaya, pineapple, orange), floral, and mildly resinous and earthy with a touch of pine, and a slight touch of cattiness. The flavor bears all of that out, and not unlike the aroma it's not sharp or brash, but quite mellow and smooth. I think the fruitiness remains pretty much the same, but I'm finding some more floral notes, some additional grapefruit, and none of the cattiness (which was just a light whiff anyway). Maybe I even imagined it. Nah, it's still there. Very mild though. I think I'm also getting more of a tangerine rather than a regular orange, meaning it has a bit of a sharper character, but maybe that's because I'm more than a few sips into it at this point; your olfactory sense do adapt to certain smells and essentially change the beer a tiny bit as you go along. I think there's also a bit of the blueberry that you get from Mosaic - nice! Getting back on track, it doesn't seem that bitter. Is this one of those new fangled NE IPAs? Nah, at 8.2% it's really an Imperial IPA. There's some bitterness to it but not that much, or at least not the biting 70+ IBUs you might normally find. I'd guess it's more like 50 IBUs but it could be 70 as there's a lot of sweet malt to balance it - the malt is fairly solid, sweet and grainy, acting as a trampoline for the hops to jump around on. Mmmmmmmm! Yummy! It's really nice. The mouthfeel is supple and wide as well, just like the aroma and flavor. I'd call it medium bodied leaning towards medium-full with a distinctly dextrinous character to it; and the fine-bubbled carbonation is just gently tingling. Overall I'm quite impressed. I was really happy with their Condenser, and this one is just as good. It might even be the same base beer but with different hops - I can live with that.