Ithaca Excelsior! IPAbbey

Formerly brewed at Ithaca Beer Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Ithaca, New York USA

GABF ’07. Pours hazy dark yellow with a small, fizzy, off-white head, diminishing with spare lacing. Average malt (grain, meal), average hops (flowers, perfume, herbs), average yeast (sweat, earth) with notes of paper. Medium bodied, alcoholic texture, average carbonation, and a bitter finish. Average duration, light sweetness, heavy acidity and bitterness.

Enthusiastic pour yeilds a slightly hazy copper with an orangetinted head that settled slowly. Nose is of sturdy hops, citrus and honey. Hop nose does not insatntly follow into medium body of balanced burly malts and yeastyness. A few whisps of my basement. Hops reapear in middle of body and fade with finish. Alocohol is not readily noticed.

(Bottle #1788 - APR 07) Appearance: Pours a hazy coppy body with a thin, short-lived off-white head. Smell: The heavy hop aroma of apricot, citrus, and pine is evidence of the bitterness that awaits. A bit boozy, too. Taste: A light, short-lived taste of caramel offers almost no sweetness and quickly dissolves into flavors of apricot, grapefruit, and resinous pine with an assertive bitterness. Minor hint of Belgian yeast. There’s a light acidity on the highly bitter finish. The alcohol is quite evident. Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied. Mild carbonation. Slighty syrupy mouthfeel. Drinkability: Tough to finish. The domineering IPA characteristics really squash it’s nobler Belgian side leaving it a bit of a fiasco.

750 from my Secret Santa - thanks!! A big brass-colored pour, with a relatively faint head. In the back of my mind is Chouffe Houbolon as a comparison. A tough balance to strike between the complexity of a tripel and the relative assertiveness of an American IPA. I can certainly taste the fruity simcoe hops here. Along with some alcohol heat and some leafy green funk, these are the flavors that dominate, and there’s not quite enough spice or subtlety for me. But still a very solid brew that I’m happy to have sampled.

750ml bottle shared courtesy of TomDecapolis. Released Apr ’07. Bottle # 1654. Poured medium and cloudy golden color a small sized off white head. Aromas of floral, earthy, citrus, yeast, and just hoppy. Tastes of lighter yeast, melons, citrus, earthy, and caramel.

Poured a lightly hazy, dark golden color with a small, off white head that left nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of floral hops, light soap, honey, toffee, and some yeast as well. Taste of vanilla, caramel malts, pine resin, citrus fruits, simcoe hops, with a moderate bitterness in the finish. No alcohol detected.

Pours a lightly hazy golden amber with a smaller bubbly off white head. Aroma of malty sweet cereal grains, earthy, lightly floral and candy sweetness. Flavor of tea, earthy, citrus notes, malty sweetness, light hop bitterness and hops.

In short: Double IPA, american style. Very sweet. Good but not very exciting.
How: Mtl-crew beer-and-spagatt tasting. Bottle, fresh from beerbuzzmontreal
The look: Cloudy dark orange with some big off-white bubbles acting as a head
In long: Smell of fresh citrusy hops, the american kind. The beer is sweet, very sweet, sugary even, too much so for my taste. The malts are as caramelized as they are honeyed. Alcohol is apparent. Hops manage to surface late in the game for a much welcomed sweet and fruity bitter finish. In a blind tasting I would have never guessed this is a Belgian beer. Just felt like a very sweet American IPA to me. Belgian by name only. As Belgian as Pierre Janssens, a fifth generation Texan who likes go bowling with a firearm.