Maritime Pacific Islander Pale Ale

Brewed by Maritime Pacific Brewing Co.
Style: American Pale Ale
Seattle, Washington USA

Bottle. Pours with lively carbonation, a nice head, clinging lace, and a golden hue. Beautiful. Aroma is grapefruit and citrus. Flavor is a bit of a let-down; flavors are much too apprehensive here, with the grapefruit and sour citrus notes playing scaredy-cat. Average mouthfeel. Pleasant beer, but it needs assertiveness in the finish.

Draught at pub. Pours a murky dark gold color with a fluffy white head and sticky lacing. Vary nice citrus and earthy nose. Bold hop profile with a good malt backbone. Nice APA.

This rating is for the Dry Hopped version, known on draft as Islander DH. The non-DH version is a separate beer which I can’t seem to add.
Draft at Via Tribunali. Pours dark straw color with an enormous bubbly, sudsy white head. Humongous floral and bitter hops on the nose, and they announce themselves on the attack and throughout the quaff. There’s enough malt there for balance but this one’s all about the hops. I wrote off Islander ten years ago as a snooze among APAs, but the DH version is more than enough to resurrect it.
Fantastic beer, made all the more delicious by the fact that it’s the hottest July day on record in Seattle today, and this had huge flavor even icy cold, and was totally refreshing in the face of all this muggy heat. Fantastic hot weather session beer.

Pours a nice golden color with a thick white head. Very substantia lacing, lasting throughout the beer. Very light malted aroma with just a trace of hops. Pretty watery on the palate, slides down a bit too easily. Flavor is bitter, with not a whole lot else to balance out the hops. Slight astringent quality at the end, along with the hoppy bitterness.

Very pale golden beer, thin white head. Aroma has some fairly strong grassy notes. Flavour is fairly hoppy but the body is a bit thin. Flavour is slightly hoppy, thin Cascade/citrus aroma with very low maltiness. Very grassy flavour/aroma. As it warms there is a bit of spicy flavour coming forward as well.

Bottle Pours a very light golden color. Quite hazy and a moderate puffy white head. Light ans sweet malts dominate the aroma but there are enough hops there to balance at first sniff. Flavor is more decidedly hoppy, at least at first. Fairly bitter. OK...at last as well. Quite dry and bitter in fact. The malts are a bit grainy, yes. Feel is moderatly heavy, and quite chalky.

(12 oz bottle: Bottleworks in Seattle, WA) I’m on the fence with this one. It has a nice balance between malt and hops, but the malt is very grainy to me, and actually showing a good bit of corn flavor, and that’s just not winning me over. The hops is citrusy and moderately bitter, but isn’t assertive enough to dominate this brew. Lots of grain in the nose, though it’s not as corn-based as the flavor, and the aroma of hops is actually fairly mild. Body is light-to-medium, and fairly clean throughout and somewhat crisp in the finish. Medium golden color, fully clear, with a few streams of carbonation bubbles rising through the beer. The off-white head is a bit small on the pour, and does settle to a wide rim, but leaves quite a bit of decorative lacing on the glass. Not bad, but too much corn and grain to really woo me.

Draft at the brewery
Dry hopped version. Clear yellow. Very fresh and gritty, grassy and soapy hop flavor. Not bad, a little sweet, a little sweaty. Copper-scented metallic nose with some hop oils. Good stuff, a little weak and pale.