Dark Horse Crooked Tree IPA

This is the final Crooked Tree from the sampler pack from Dark Horse Brew Company... good old regular Crooked Tree, one of my favorite brews from this brewery. I'm in beer geek heaven tonight. We wandered Clintonville, hunting a rare release (no luck,...yet) and coming up with many, many more good brews. Is it sad that my pub crawls have turned into craft beer store crawls along Indianola Ave? I'm perfectly fine with that, actually. I think we sufficiently redeemed Dark Horse with the Plead the 5th review last night (seriously, that one bottle made up for the other three in this sampler), but hey, we also saved the best for last from this sampler.

This pours a medium orange color with a moderate white head and squee! it's unfiltered, meaning it's hazy to the point of being almost opaque, with some light sediment floating in it. Please, save your triple-filtering for the crappy macro-produced American piss water. The aroma isn't overwhelming, but smells of oranges and vague other citrus fruits, along with bready malts. The flavor, though, is citrusy with a solid earthy presence, finishing with some caramel and lightly sweet notes. As it warms, I pick up some hints of freshly mown grass and grapefruit. This is a little more dank than I recall, but I don't find it unappealing. It's very well-balanced, with the malts coming through, and it's moderately carbonated yet smooth... not quite sticky, not quite velvety, but rather well balanced.

This is one of Dark Horse's more readily available and popular year-round brews. If you can get our hands on some Double Crooked Tree, by all means, please do -- it's even better than this. And this is pretty damn good. My personal opinion is that even anti-hop people will probably like this. The antithesis of last night, tonight is our night to get to the IPA's in the fridge before the hops stale. Boom.

4.5/5 caps

-Jennie

So, I showered, yes I like to do that from time to time (roughly once a fortnight or so, give or take a decade). Yeah, indoor plumbing is awesome... Regardless, while showering, this brew has had time to warm up.

The color is a hazy amber orange color, almost a home brew sort of hue. The white head has stuck around from pre-shower til now. The aroma is orange, grapefruit, bread and aftershave.... hmm... Maybe I shouldn't have used aftershave while having something this close to my nose. Live and learn, eh? Or is it live and let die? Damn you Paul McCartney! But I digress. This has an amazing aroma that comes out more when warmed up a bit. I finally get to quench my freshly showered thirst. The first sip is not as hoppy as I expect out of an IPA, There's fresh grass and citrus, both faint, in the front, with a biscuity maltiness about it in the middle, and ending on a slightly bitterness, also faint. Balanced, yes, overly hoppy, no. The mouthfeel is smooth, with light stickiness, but not a lingering or overpowering stickiness. Side note, the lacing on the glass is beautiful. Do an online search for 'lacewood' and compare the wood grain with the lacing on this glass...

Not one of my all time favorite IPAs (I like the aggressively bitter and super hopped varieties), but this is a damn good beer that will probably get non-IPA drinkers to enjoy an IPA.

The only quarrel I have has nothing to do with this beer, but more of the fact that the website is having "issues" uploading the picture, and finally after almost an hour or trying (yes, that's how long it roughly takes to review a beer thoroughly between the distractions and finding the proper words to describe this), the picture has uploaded.

4.4/5 caps

-Nathan-