Redhook IPA

Brewed by Redhook Brewery
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Woodinville, Washington USA

Dirty yellow pour doesn’t exactly make for an exciting introduction. Dry, malt with some dusty hop aroma. Light bodied. Some toasted malt, dirty, dry hop flavors. The hops are very mild and muted with this one. This feels unclean to me. Overall, a rather uneventful IPA.

This is sweet for an IPA, hopped in the Cascade style with that piney/caramel thing going on. The hops are a bit more weak, and the fruit a bit more strong, than in other IPAs. It pours a light orange/amber with a thin head, and the nose is the normal IPA nose, but a bit more weak. The body is not thin, but it’s not quite medium. There’s a bit of a sourdought thing going on and its a bit musky when it is bitter. It almost tastes like a bad pilsner with Cascade hops. The bitterness is medium and lasts for a bit into the tail end. An unexciting beer in a good style.

Aroma is fruit, hops, and acid. Light orange with a small head. Flavors of fruit, then bitter hops, a pilsner like taste, then a sourdough bread aftertaste. Enjoyable.

A solid IPA. Pours a golden color with a small white head. Some earthy hop aroma. The flavor is as you would expect it - leaning towards more bitterness than sweetness. Nothing outstanding but I thought it was a solid IPA that would be good to introduce to an inexperienced devotee.

Bottle: Okay, for an IPA (actually for any beer) the aroma sucks. Does not smell like any IPA that I’d be looking forward to drinking after smelling this. Smells grassy, a little skunky. More pale lager aromas than IPA. Pours a light amber with a minimal white head. Grassy skunk Euro pale lager flavors up front with a stale bitter finish. This is garbage and the lowest rated IPA to date for me out of 32. Talk about missing the boat in trying to create an IPA. They should be embarrassed. This may be the first beer to ever actually make me angry. It’s beers like this that make you say "Wow, I thought I liked this style of beer more than that. I can’t believe my average score is that low for the style." Then you look at your ratings for that style and see this listed at the bottom and it all makes sense.

I have not had a whole lot of experience with this brewer. This was my first try of their IPA. Sampled from a 12 oz brown bottle this beer poured a medium amber color with a small white fluffy head that faded quickly. The aroma was lightly malty and had a piney hop scent. The flavor was mostly piney hops with a light malt body behind it. There was a sharp hop bite on the finish.

The best thing about this beer is that it is an IPA. Otherwise, there is nothing really special about it - bottom end of its category. Less bitter when poured into a glass.

Pours transparent golden in color with no head. Strong piney hop aroma. This bottle had almost no ipa or hop taste to it. I thought it might be a bad bottle, but looking at the scores it looks par for the course.