MacTarnahans Oak-Aged IPA

Brewed by Portland Brewing Company (Pyramid)
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Portland, Oregon USA

12 oz. brown, longneck bottle. No freshness date on bottle, but knowing where it came from, it's a fresh batch. Poured out a nice, orangish / copper color, with a huge, off white head at first, that slowly slid back to a thick lacing down the sides of the glass. Aromas are of malts, oakiness, piney hops, and grapefruit. Tastes are of slight caramel, oak barrel, malts, and strong hops. Medium mouthfeel and a bitter finish blend well together. This beer would make a great session beer, in my book. Finishes slightly dry, and hoppy.

Beer pours dark golden with a nice fluffy egg white head that is retained. Aroma is decidedly hoppy tending toward the citric side. Flavor does not measure up to the promise of the aroma. Decently bitter, just not strong enough flavors to distinguish itself in a very challenging field.

12 oz bottle pours a hazy copper orange color with a small off white head with huge bubbles that leaves some lacing. Citrusy and fruity aromas, nice sweet grapefruit and piney, hoppy flavors. Medium bodied with a nice soft and creamy mouthfeel, very easy to drink, this bottle didn't last very long.

Thin head despite it's high carbonation level. Very good citrusy hop aroma. Flavor a bit unbalanced favoring the hops. Slight oak nuance is different. Not bad.

I was surprised to find this and the Black Watch Porter in a few of my beer stores the other day. Now that I think about it, I drank this beer at Raging Ribs in Orlando about a year ago.
Pours a glowing bronze body with a rocky off white head. Lovely nose of grapefruit, caramel, spruce and or pine. The flavor is far more mild than the aroma, Rats! Some notes of sage, white pepper and curry accompany the spruce/pine and grapefruit. Palate is soft and light, the finish is a bitter dry hoppyness. Pretty good stuff, nothing exciting but I’d drink it again.

the smell is a combination of malt and hops; medium amber and very cloudy; very thin head; the taste was not bad but not what I had hoped - a little too dry for my taste, with an astringent quality, perhaps from the oak

The second I uncapped the bottle there was something strange about this beer. It pours a very thin sickly amber with a thin head and some sea monkeys. The overwhelming floweriness in the aroma was hard to ignore, but even more bazarre was the flavor of...is that Belgian yeast? Something very fruity here, perhaps the hops are simply of a variety I'm not too familiar with, but it's probably not my favorite hop character. The hops are not particularly overt, unlike most dry-hopped beers, but perhaps the oak aging has something to do with it. The oak is nice on the palate though, and there is a small swell of malt that is surely brought out by this. Overall a rather interesting beer that is enjoyable but not immensely.

Re-rate. While the bite goes away rather quickly, it sustains enough to be quite enjoyable. Original: 3.1-This beer looks and smells fantastic--if only the taste were as comparable. For some reason, the extra hops in this beer don’t make it better.