Ithaca Sour Flower Power

Brewed by Ithaca Beer Company
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Ithaca, New York USA

(BCTC, draft) Murky amber body with off-white head. Aroma is moderately sweet, sour/Brett, some wood, orange. Taste is medium sweet, orange/grapefruit, some Brett/wood, light straw. Light-medium body, some resin.

[BCTC 09] Hazy dark gold with a medium sized, off white head that left nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of horsey brett, vanilla, floral hops, citrus fruits, pine, and toast. Taste of citrus, pine, grapefruit, toasted malts, vanilla, and a bitter, hoppy finish.

BCTC 09. Pours a lightly hazy golden amber with a medium off white head that laced. Brett gave the beer a barnyard like aroma, some vanilla and not as much funk. Also getting lightly toasted malts and citrusy hops. Flavor of again that horsey barnyard type thing, toasted malt, some citrusy hops, moderate hop bitterness, vanilla and light sour character. Dried out nicely.

In short: IPA bitterness meets funky sourness in this confused but entertaining beer.
How: Tap at Boston Extreme Beer Fest 2009
The look: Cloudy orangey blonde body topped by a small off-white head
In long: A weird best. The funky hoppy nose is pretty out-there. Hard to describe. Flavour elements include bready malts, citrus fruits, piney hops, funky sourness, honey/caramel, grapefruits, floral notes, lots of cedar. Dry finish. It’s pretty worthless to list flavour elements here. This beer attempts to blend the bitterness of a American IPA, the wild sourness of the west-coast brews and a bretty funkiness. And it pretty much succeeds. However on paper it sounds like the best beer ever but drinking it is another story. This is a clash of flavours/styles more than a cohesive extravaganza. I’ll stick to the Hitachino Classic Ale when I want an IPA-ish beer on the wild side. The foundation is good and this is a very interesting but not entirely successful experiment that gets many points for being entertaining, like watching a Slayer perform a dance number on their own music.

Tap at BCTC 2009: Pours a murky copper with a dense off white film of head. Hoppy and bretty aroma- haystack character and mild citrus and leather. Fluffy feel with an earthy flavor. Some citric hops mesh with the rustic Brux/leathery presence. Has a resiny finish. In the range of an Orval style, but not quite there. Still good.

On tap, BCTC 09. Pours a hazy orange copper body with a frothy off-white head. The nose is more hops than brett, but there’s a pretty good amount of it for it just being 3 months old. The flavor is nice citrus hops up front with a solid caramel malt backbone. The bretty funkiness emerges stronger on the finish and lingers quite nicely. It’s a pretty standard example of the style, not too far off from Wild Devil, but there’s a bit more malt to this. Medium bodied with moderate fizzy soft carbonation, a little drier towards the finish.

A orange pour with creamy white head and lace. Sweet malt with a light breadiness. Flavor is sweet malt backbone followed by a nice subtle finishing bitter. A nice medium bodied beer with good carbonation. Nice beer all round.

BCTC’09. Another hoppy brett beer, I had this after Southampton’s take on it. And I really hope they aren’t trying to mimic Orval cause it isn’t even in the same galaxy. Here the brett is stronger [than the SH beer]. The aroma is mixed with grassy strong hops and that mixes with some brett creating a goats-oil kind of thick herbal mush. The bitterness really breaks through in the flavor to offset some of this, which I actually liked a lot in the structure of this beer. But in general I am not a fan of the hoppy brett brew. Appearance is a glowing thick dark amber with a thick head.