Thomas Hooker Hop Meadow IPA

Brewed by Thomas Hooker Brewing Company
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Bloomfield, Connecticut USA

Bottle from julio’s Liquor in Mass. Pours with a red body topped by a medium thick, quickly disappearing hea with little lacing. It’s bitter and hoppy with a slight pine note as well as a slightly sweet malt note and some butter notes. Medium bodied and slightly dry.

Draught: Aroma of floral hops, fruit, berries, and resin. Poured dark orange/light brown in color with a medium-sized, dense, rocky, tan head that lasted throughout. Cloudy. Lots of particles of all sizes. Sparkling. Very good to excellent lacing. Flavor is medium to heavily bitter. Tastes of floral hops and bitter resin. Medium to full body. Thickish, lightly sticky texture. Average carbonation. Medium sweet hop finish. A good IPA.

Bottled. Toasty amber with lots of flocculent/particulate matter suspended in it. I had this on tap the other night and the tap version was clear. Sweet chocolate/vanilla hop aroma. Hoppy, briny, a little metallic, not very sweet. Finishes out with grapefruit peel bitterness. Just another day at the AIPA office.

NorCal December ’07 - Not only am I able to tick off another state on my "states tried" catergory, but it’s a nice IPA too. It does a fairly decent job at being a WC IPA, without really being on the WC. A typical aroma of sweet malts, piney and citrusy hops. Appearance is darker than normal, with a bit of cherrywood red to mix with the dark amber hues. A nice one-finger thick cap tops it off. Mouthfeel has a nice creamyness to it. Flavor is pretty standard stuff, with caramel malts and a mix of citrus and piney hop character. It’s all at such a standard level, there’s not much excitement to it. But to it’s credit, it’s a nice, easy drinking IPA. Suprised at the alchol content.

Cask at GBBF 2007. A very cloudy golden beer with a thin beige head. The aroma is sweet grassy hoppy, while the flavor is sweet malty with strong ntoes of oranges and grapefruit - Cascade hops, leading to a dry bitter finish.

This beer pours a cloudy orange amber with a very thin head to it.There is also some minor spotted laceing along the sides of the glass. The aroma is very hoppy and floral. As you drink it there is an initial bitterness with lots of hops. The hops also coats the sides of your moth and last for aquite some time. the palate is full of carmel and hints of roasted malt. The palate duration is moderate but not very intence.

Pours a crystal clear browned orange with a puffy, yellowish, tan head with good retention and 3-dimentional lacing. Slightly muted nose caramel malts, musty, citric, astringent hops, nuts, and toasted bread. The flavour hits you with an initial smack of astringent, bitter hops and finishes with a biscuity, toasted bready malt backbone that becomes domninant. The aftertaste has a resiny NW hop profile. The body is thin and the palate is a bit watery. Not feelin this one.

Not really that great of an IPA for me but for some it might be okay. I may have had a stale bottle.