Boulder Beer The GABF 25th Year Beer

Bottle. Orange in color with a nice white head. Slightly bready orangey aroma. Citrusy apricot flavor. Fruity notes. Finish is dry. Fruity finish. Pineapple notes. Well balanced. Nice beer.

Smells very hoppy and fresh. Taste at first is remininscent of an IPA, but then some malts come in. Pretty good for one of my less than favorite styles.

I really didn’t expect much from this, but I was very pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the initial hop aroma blast, somewhat resiny, but mostly floral and kinda soapy (in a good way). Some notes of cookies. The flavor was smooth and rounded with a good caramel-toast malt, a light vague fruitiness and plenty of perfumy spiced hops. Medium bitter finish. Love the soft, rounded mouthfeel. Pretty drinkable.

Sampled April 2007
Pours with an almost brilliantly clear, perfectly amber color and is topped by a frothy, initially three-finger thick, light tan colored head that leaves some lacing patterns on the sides of the glass as it slowly subsides. The aroma has a nice hop character to it; lightly herbal, with some sweet citrus notes of orange peel, lemon zest and a touch of pity tangerine. A fair amount of malt character is here too, with notes of dry biscuit-like grain, a touch of caramel / brown sugar, but really this has a nice, full, fresh ground malt aroma, especially towards the end. Really though this beer has a hop focused nose, it is quite interesting how the citrus character moves from sweet to tart citrus notes as one takes in a draught of the aroma.

The beer rests lightly on the mouth, that is to say it is fairly light bodied, yet with a touch of fullness to it. Quite hoppy with a biting, zesty hop note that adds a bitterness from the get go. This bitterness lingers on into the finish. The beer is fairly dry, which really adds to the zippy, biting hop character. There are still a fair amount of citrus-like hop notes noticeable though, I just think that more might have been noticeable if the malt character was a bit fuller and a touch sweeter. Still that would detract from how light and drinkable this beer is. As this beer is, the citrus character leans towards lemon zest and tart grapefruit, with a touch of sweeter orange character around the edges. Despite being fairly dry, there is quite a bit of malt character present; I get a really nice, fresh malt character here (a sweet of biscuit notes, crusty bread, and soda cracker character), as well as a touch of caramelized malt character.

This is actually a really nice beer, it is quite well balanced. It is certainly hop focused (but not to the levels of most American IPAs), but has a really nice, subtly powerful malt character that mixes with and intermingles with the hop character. I am quite impressed with how much citrus character was pulled out of the Saaz hops, I always thought of them as having a lemon zest character, but this is a bit more than I was expecting (the ale yeast certainly contributes to this I am sure(. This is quite a nice beer, and it turned out to be a nice surprise as I was not expecting much.

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I’m a sucker for an interesting use of Saaz, and this just hit me right. Refreshing tea like bitterness with the citrus hop character, and a creamy mouthfeel.