Van Dame White ISA
Granville Island Brewery

 

 

Pours a hazy, witbier-y colour, capped by lots of head that leaves lots of lacing. This one is what's advertised: first sniff is witbier, and then second sniff is west coast hops (although, at 40 IBUs, the hopping certainly could be more aggressive). Like a west coast Hoegaarden, almost, although not quite so tart as that famed version of the wit style, and some of the added spices here are fairly muted.

All told, it's a really likeable summer beer, albeit not one that's game changing.

 

With all due respect to the other person who reviewed this, that review is wrong. This is a very easy beer to mess up, and they absolutely nail it. The wit, citrus and coriander hit you immediately, then the ISA hops, which complement the citrus of the wit. The finish is crisp and lingers.

650ml bottle - made with, I presume, guava, citrus, and coriander, which somehow leads up to a 'west coast spin on a Belgian Witbier'.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, densely foamy, and somewhat creamy off-white head, which leaves some chunky paint splatter lace around the glass as it genially recedes.

It smells of bready, doughy pale malt, rising yeast, muddled citrus and other indistinct tropical fruit, a soft coriander/white pepper spice, and herbal, leafy, and certainly floral hops. The taste is grainy, gritty pale malt, a nice fruity guava/gooseberry sweetness, some still plain citrus flesh fruitiness, middling yeast, fading spicy coriander and rainbow peppercorn, and more pleasantly restrained earthy, grassy, and floral hop bitters.

The bubbles are active enough in their equally supportive and playful frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and mostly smooth, the fruitiness overriding any snooping hop bitterness here. It finishes off-dry, the chewy doughiness of the malt lingering on alongside the common decline of fruit and spice.

Not a bad brew, the Belgian character perhaps getting the better of the ISA's supposed attributes, in that the hops seem to get short shrift overall. I'm tempted to lump this onto the growing pile of recent beers that seem to be trying to do too many things at once, and thus detracting from the whole. At any rate, this is easy to drink, if you don't think too hard about it, and that's a-ok for summer.