Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Tree Hop Head India Pale Ale

Tree Hophead IPA

I'm not always about trying new beers. Once in a while I revisit an old favorite, like this IPA from Tree Brewing - Hop Head. Beer geeks take their IPAs very seriously, myself incuded. If it says IPA on the bottle, it better have some hops in it. This does. It's not really a West Coast hop bomb, but there is some pleasing bitterness. There's also a balance of sweet malt to offset the hopping. It's also not as strong as a lot of stock IPAs, this one weighs in at 5.8%abv which is still respectable for the style, though many fall into the 6-7%abv range. I'd still sneak this one into my "session beer" category. Great aromatics - oranges, apricots, grapefruit. It's also great looking - deep orange-gold with a nice sized creamy lasting white head. It leaves a lot of sticky lacing. So far I've only had the bottled version, looking forward to trying it on tap one day. It comes in 6x 341ml bottles or as part of Tree's sampler pack. Tree is cool enough to brew using no preservatives and leave their beer unpasteurized. The label of Hop Head also proudly bears 2 maple leafs!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just had some of this stuff out of a keg...its very very good!!!