Ithaca Excelsior! Alphalpha

Brewed by Ithaca Beer Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Ithaca, New York USA

Pours a dark copper color with golden orange hues and a massive frothy, soapy head. Excellent retention with huge chunks of soapy lacing. Beautiful citrus west coast style hop aroma with lots of grapefruit, orange peel and pine notes. I’m also picking up some guava and other tropical fruit notes along with some sweet honey. Creamy medium body with a an amazing sweet honey/molasses and caramel malt presence that balance out the floral citrus hops. This beer is ridiculously smooth with an almost undetectable ABV. Very smooth and refreshing, one of the most quaffable beers I’ve had to date. I have to stop myself from pounding the whole glass. Extremely well balanced with nice citrus hop bitterness, caramel malt, smooth swet honey and guava/tropical fruit notes. Pine, grapefruit, lemon zest, orange peel flavors with a slightly dry finish. This is an excellent beer that I wish I could buy by the case.

( 750ml thanks to zdk9) Pours a cloudy orange with huge oily head. Nose is more chlorine (seems very common with Ithaca brews for me) honey, grapefruit. Taste is bitter hops, orange blossom honey, with a creamy body and nice balance overall that lends towards bitter more than sweet. If this beer didn’t smell like chlorine it would be nearly perfect. Very good, but disappointed by the nose despite my 9 rating. It was so good on so many levels, but bittersweet.

Poured a murky orange color with a small, white head that left nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of pine, floral hops, citrus, and tropical fruits. Taste of citrus fruits, pine, toffee malts, light toast, honey, grapefruit, some alcohol, and lingering honey in the finish.

In short: A full bodied, highly refreshing, floral and fruity pale IPA.
How: From the bottle (750ml) at Boston Extreme Beer Fest 2009. Multiple samples.
The look: Cloudy light golden body topped by large white head
In long: A smooth bready doughy backbone. Light honey presence. A ton of highly aromatic floral hops. Medium bitterness and the finish is mainly grapefruit with some pine cone. Nice tartness. A lively carbonation. Great mouthfeel. No alcohol presence at all. Talk about a beer that lets itself drink! One of the few unexpected surprise from EBF. Nothing spectacular but what a highly drinkable refreshing IPA it is. I need to get me some of this. I can drink beers like that until I forget about all my problems, which ironically are mainly due to my beer drinking habit.

Super dense head and nice copper color. Smells a bit like honey covered alfalfa. The flavor is a medium sweet blend of honey and hops. Excellent.

tap at the Bistro. This is a very interesting beer, not at all what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed it. It pours almost with a lighter color than the Flower Power, it has much more sweeter notes both in aroma and flavor. very strong caramel component and I can even detect a hint of Belgian style yeast. The finish brings out some hop bitterness. A very well balanced interesting beer, but not your typical DIPA.

Thanks to Israel for sending this along. Bottle shared among friends poured into tulip glasses produced a two finger white head, which leaves behind great lace. The body of the brew was a clear (didn’t stir up the dregs in the first glass) apricot to gold yellow. It was amazingly fragrant tons of cascade hops aroma filled my head. The flavor of honey hits your lips first then followed by a nice hop bitter finish a great IPA in my book. It had a medium feel in my mouth with good carbonation for the tongue. Very drinkable we polished of or glasses rather quickly and was left wanting more. Another good brew from Ithaca

Bottle sample at NATIFEST ’09. Poured a cloudy copper color with an average frothy off-white head that mostly lasted with good lacing. Moderate resin and earthy aroma. Medium to full body with a smooth texture and soft carbonation. Medium to heavy spicy bittersweet flavor with a medium sweet finish of moderate duration. This is a standout beer.