Sea Dog Old East India Pale Ale

Brewed by Sea Dog Brewing (Shipyard Brewing Co.)
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Topsham, Maine USA

Tame aroma has some light grassy hops and honeyish malt sweetness that is just slightly musty. Amber-copper coloured body is topped by a shy white head that recedes rapidly to the slightest ring. Sweetness in the flavour with some caramel and butterscotch, some grassy, citrus, floral hops and medium bitterness. Medium light body with fair to moderate carbonation. Sampled at Mondial 2006.

Sea Dog appears to do one thing very well: fruit-flavored wheat ales. Beyond those, their offerings have been uninspiring. The IPA pours a medium amber color with a small, fizzy off-white head. No lacing survives the mostly diminishing head. Aroma is of sweet hops, but they are not nearly prevalant enough for this style of beer. Initial taste is acidic, with a light bitter finish. Again, there is not enough hop character in this beer to hold it up against the big hitters in this category.

picked up at trader joes. poured gold with no head and lacing. sweet floral hops aroma, mild hops taste. kind of metalic. would be a good ipa for a beginner to easy into hops, not that impressive for an ipa though.

Bottle. Clear copper/orange with a frothy off-white head, leaves stripes of lacing. Sweet cookie malt aroma with some faint citrusy hops. Caramel malt flavor mostly---can’t really pick up much hoppiness until the finish, and it is very mild at that. Kind of a thin, almost watery palate. If this was labled an APA, I’d consider it basically OK, but for an IPA it’s lacking any appreciable hop profile that’s requisite to the style.

Amber with an initially thick white head. Perfumy hop aroma. Fairly rich malty flavors with a short hop finish.

Dark amber, with half inch head. There’s definately some hops in there. Heavy and a bit sweet. The hops are less intense than I hoped from the aroma.

A very hard to detect aroma. That might have a little to do with the fact that I let it breathe before pouring, but I doubt it. Pours with a bubbly, white head. A faint syrupy hop note, but nothing to distinugish it as a true IPA. Tastes more of a APA than an IPA. Good malt character, sweet, with a bitter back end. A quaffable beer; a session beer in the same vein as a bud light. This would be good to use to introduce someone to a different beer, but not a good example of the style. It is also sweet on the back end. This is not a bad IPA, per say, but not a good one either. For 5.49, if it were more available, I would buy it instead of bud light. I could drink about the same amount of these.

I love IPAs, but I’ll probably give away the other Sea Dogs that I bought. Looks okay, weak smell with a bit of hops. The bottle reads best before Dec. 06, but there could be a problem here. The palete is heinous, almost a caricature of what an IPA should feel like in your mouth. Feels artificially bitter A real disappointment.