McEwans India Pale Ale

Brewed by John Smiths (S&N, Heineken)
Style: Bitter
Tadcaster, England

Tap. Clear amber body, creamy white head w/ thick lacing. Apple pie aroma. The flavor also has apple pie along with tart apple, light dandelion and bready light caramel malt. Dry mouthfeel.

(bottle - 12 oz) Clear copper pour with a white head that goes down to a very small film atop the beer. Now that I know it’s a bitter, the dark color of the beer doesn’t surprise me as much. Aroma of caramel mixed with malts and some hops. Very sweet smelling. Taste has lots of caramel flavor but beyond that, you can’t really tell what flavors it has. Very watery and thin bodied. Some hop bitterness at the end.

Big creamy very light gray head with larger bubbles, shrinking rapidly. Dark red body. Deep, sweet aroma of smoky, toffeeish malts, and some green apple. Where are the hops? Deep, smoky, sweet malty taste with smoky, bitter aftertaste, which lingers. Smokiness really dominates. Smooth mouthfeel. Quite good, but perhaps a bit too much smoke for my tastes, and not enough else.

Shame more people can’t be a little open minded and maybe historically knowledgable. Fine beer, really has nothing to do with the IPA style Americans know. It’s not pale, it’s not hoppy in the grapefruity sensek that we’re all used to. NIce nutty-slightly roasted flavour. Just enough hop balance to keep it from being over malty. Generally a treat beer since the sixer runs around $10.

This didn’t look, smell or taste like an IPA. Too dark, too nutty, not enough piney citrus. Tasted closer to a brown ale. Taken as a brown ale-ish drink, I thought it was rather enjoyable.

A nice smell and a nice look. The taste wasn’t bad but a little to fruity for my liking. Overall, pretty good.

I didn’t think this was actually an IPA. I didn’t taste any hops. At least not any IPA hops. It’s a shame to go in expecting one thing from a beer (i.e. hop content) only to get something completely different (i.e. a pretty bland, light-bodied, non-hoppy "bitter") What I did taste and like about this beer though was some pit fruit, like plum or cherry, in the malts. This beer has so much potential, but it’s just weak.

(Bottle) Pours dark amber body with a moderate off-white head. Aroma of caramel, fruit, grass, and hops. Flavor of malt, earthiness, and caramel. Blah...