Dieu du Ciel Corne du Diable/Nils Oscar IPA (CAN/SWE)

Two IPAs from unexpected parts: Quebec and Sweden. Accordingly, both are on the pricey side.

Dieu du Ciel Corne du Diable: The devil's horn. It's in the style of "la cote ouest de l'Amerique du Nord," and it tastes it. Pretty golden amber with lacy head, it smells of Cascade dry hopping. Medium-to-full in body and lightly carbonated. Malty, hoppy (though nothing ridiculous), grapefruit and pine. Tingles the ribs afterwards. 

Nils Oscar India Pale Ale: A classier label, I think, although possibly a bit dull. This one also claims a US influence, with "American Amarillo hops to give the exotic aroma of tropical fruit." It seems lighter in color and in body (I didn't drink them side by side), and fizzier. It is in fact vaguely fruity tasting (not citrusy, as I tend to think of Amarillos), and maybe spicy/earthy. No IPA hop blast, but it's pleasant. What semi-spoils it for me is the finish, which is dry and in fact chalky. The effects of a less than fresh bottle? I don't know. I don't regret that it isn't an American-style hop bomb, although others may, but it loses points for the powder. 

For me, this is now two winners from Dieu du Ciel.

Mendocino Brewing Red Tail Ale/IPA (CA)

Mendocino Brewing Company is located in Hopland, CA, but also has a big brewery in Saratoga Springs where they produce the unexceptional Indian lager Kingfisher. In a 12-pack, Mendocino's offerings came out to just under a buck a bottle for me, so it's "bargain" craft beer, like Saranac, Dundee, et. al. 

Red Tail Ale: Their flagship beer, a (surprise) fairly subdued amber ale. It's pretty nice though. The brewery's website says  it has Cluster and Cascade hops, but I don't detect citrus/floral. The Cascades certainly aren't used for dry-hopping here. The site also says that most of their beers are bottle conditioned, but none of these seem to be. Red Tail Ale is slightly more malt than hops to me, but finishes dry. Very faint orange flavor. Clean and crisp.

White Hawk Select IPA: 7% ABV and 60 IBUs. The brewer says it has a "truly authentic English flavor," but is a blend of Fuggles and Cascades, so it's not purely English in style. Here, I do detect the Cascades. Not a blockbuster IPA, but very flavorful, well-balanced, and brings a bit of that IPA tingle. Nice lacing down the glass too.

So a good start to the variety pack. A pretty decent flagship beer and a nice IPA. But the IPA isn't the biggest of the pack as it would be more many other breweries.

Four More from Lakefront (WI)

The remaining four from my Lakefront 8-pack are darker beers, except for the India Pale Ale.

IPA: The strongest beer of the lot at 7% while the rest are between 5% and 6%. This also proves to be the best of the bunch. It's not a West Coast hop bomb, but more of a balanced English-style IPA. Big aroma comes through as soon as you pop the cap. Hazy pale orange, nice trail of foam left down the side of the glass. Taste-wise, it's not the punchiest of the style in terms of hops, but puts forth a nice balance of biscuity malts and citrus and floral hops. Doesn't feel like its  ABV. 

Eastside Dark Lager: "A rich, dark lager like the ones Milwaukee's founding fathers might have enjoyed on the old Eastside." Wikipedia describes Milwaukee's East side as "a mix of hipsters, hippies, college students and young professionals." Was the old East side different? Regardless, this is a dark lager, but not a rich enough one for me. Any roasty coffee or chocolate elements are muted. 

Instead, it's a bit metallic. Better than macro lagers (blah, blah, blah) but that's about it.

Riverwest Stein Beer: Riverwest is another Milwaukee neighborhood, and I appreciate the brewery's effort in tapping into it's local scene. I did not drink this lager out of a stein, but out of a regular lager glass. It's lighter than Eastside Dark, a chestnut colored beer. The taste is primarily caramel, and then maybe woody hops which keep it from being too sweet.  Alas, it's somewhat watery. Still better than Eastside Dark, but not a memorable lager.

Fuel Cafe Coffee Flavored Stout: When I cracked this open, I sensed that sour salami smell I had found in the lighter beers. Fortunately, any such taste was covered up. This pours pitch black with a red-beige head that fizzes away quickly. The coffee is there as promised. It's actually fairly hard to down, maybe due less to its richness than to a mild astringency in the finish. If you really like coffee stout, give this one a try.

Overall for me, a pretty unimpressive variety pack from Lakefront. I'd drink the IPA again and maybe the Cherry Lager, but that's about it. Was there an issue of freshness? All bottles were dated from later August, which is only three months. That doesn't preclude the possibility of poor handling, but that still doesn't change the fact that for me these weren't all that great. 

Three from Saranac (NY)

Saranac really makes a lot of styles, so many that I can buy their variety six-pack and find no beers that I've reviewed (though I've had a couple of these before).

Adirondack Lager: The good news is that this isn't a bland lager. The bad news is it doesn't taste quite right (at least not to me). Clear, light amber color, light hop aroma. It's made with both Hallertau and Cascades, and you can kind of taste both of them battling it out. However, some of the taste gets buried beneath heavy carbonation (not uncommon for this brewery). There are also somewhat sour, metallic elements appearing. Maybe just a bad one-off for me, but this wasn't good.

Pale Ale: Much better. This might be considered their signature beer, and it's all over the place around these parts. "Classic English Style," it says on the label, and it uses Fuggles and EKG hops to prove it. I think I sense some US-style citrusy hops in the nose, but those don't really appear. In stead, it's a good balance of malts and fruity, herbal hops. Softly carbonated. Great sessions brew.

India Pale Ale: The label says "American I.P.A." and boasts of "generous amounts of Cascade hops." This is a tough style to crack for a place like Saranac. Do you try to appease the hop-crazed elements of the craft beer community? Or do you tone it down a notch to appeal to a larger crowd? A bit more of the latter, I'd say. The citrusy hops come through against the malt background, but neither is huge. A bit light in both body and bitterness. The last IPA I had was Great Lakes, to which Saranac can't hold a candle. Still, if you forget about others of the style, you'll find a fairly tasty beer, and maybe a good first IPA.


Not a bad half a six pack (you only get one of each). Their Pale Ale may be my favorite of the brewery, but sometimes I think its more fun to drink things like Caramel Porter and Mountain Berry Ale and Chocolate Amber Lager, even if they don't all work. That's what Saranac does best: crank out the styles.

Great Lakes Commodore Perry (OH)

Great Lakes beers were available in western New York just long enough for me to buy a variety 12-pack, but then they disappeared. Now they're back in a style, even with a display in the supermarket.

I liked all four beers from the variety pack, and Commodore Perry (India Pale Ale) doesn't disappoint. "Don't give up the sip" is the punning motto. It pours a thick-looking gold body with a lacy head. The Commodore creates that explosive mouthful of flavor you want from an IPA. It's probably a little sweeter than others upfront, and slightly fruity and spicy. The bitterness and grapefruit aftertaste come through at the end. The label requests that you drink it at 45 degrees, cooler than I'd have thought, but mellows it out a bit for non-hop heads.

One of the better IPAs, IMO. What next for me from this brewery? I think Burning River Pale Ale is the only one I can get here that I haven't tried.

Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA/Road Dog Porter (COL)

The last two from the Flying Dog mixed pack are the two heaviest.

Snake Dog IPA: The label text plays on a "crazy, stalking EX" theme. Note that it never refers to the ex- in question as female, although there are hints ("it slaps you in the face"...if that's a guy slapping a woman, it sounds pretty bad). Apparently Snake Dog has been reformulated recently, as ratebeer gives it a separate entry for 2008 on onward (now 7.1% vs. 5.75%). It's a looker: clear copper with sustaining white head. Dry-hopping with Columbus gives it a citrusy aroma. the hops are used more for flavor -- citrus, floral, and spice, I think -- than pure bitterness. Without being competitive about its bitterness, Snake Dog is in fact an exemplar of the American IPA style. Well done.

Road Dog Porter: Used to be called "Scottish," but they seemed to have dropped that. This is the first beer I've had which refers to itself as shit (e.g., "this shit is some dark, rich and malty shit."). Do traditional German breweries do that? It pours dark brown and ruby but still translucent. Again, a nice head. It's a smooth one, with a medium body, light carbonation and somewhat sweet flavor. Chocolate malts come through, but it isn't highly roasted or burnt (not that it should be). I tend to drink seasonally and would just as soon skip porters all summer. Still, this is quite good and easy drinking at 6% ABV.

I'd say these are the two best of the mixed pack, but the hefeweizen is really nice as well.

St. Peter's India Pale Ale (ENG)

I missed it, but last November, The Independent (UK) ranked the 50 best beers, and this finished #1. I couldn't find the list online, but I did find this cranky letter to the editor:

The collection of "50 best beers" in The Information (24 November) included some of my favourites and it was good to see the Indy promoting distinctive beers. But it amused me to read that St Peter's India Pale Ale could "conjure up dreamy memories of summer harvests". I wondered how many of the tasting panel were farm workers, and how many readers have experience of harvests as anything other than a nostalgic Neverland of the imagination.

No summer harvest claims from me then. Nice looking beer: hazy amber/orange, an enduring head. Nice aroma, with a decent whiff of hops. Could the taste satisfy American hop heads? Well, no. It has only a mild hop kick against a bready malt background. Possibly the hop level would be higher before the green bottle was shipped across the Atlantic. Remember, though, that IPAs were originally brewed to be shipped half way across the world in conditions worse than we see today.


The rating sites are filled with comments about how this isn't a real IPA, which seems a bit presumptuous given that this St. Peter's has likely been brewing this style for longer than America has been brewing any beer at all. (The back of the bottle label seems to say something about this, but the print is too small for me to read.)

It's nonetheless a tasty beer, but I doubt I'll buy it again at four and a half bucks a bottle. In its defense, I'll say that 500 ml is my favorite size, sharing or sessioning aside. If it were $5.99 for a bomber, I wouldn't think it extraordinarily pricey, even though I'm not sure it's worth a dollar and a half for six extra ounces (declining marginal returns and all that).

Butternuts Snapperhead IPA (NY)

So says the website:

Our India Pale Ale packs typical IPA balls but strikes better balance between
dryness and drinkability. It’s every bit as rich but a little less better than
other American interpretations of the breed

I always assumed "IPA balls" were the bitterness, but apprently not. The above is accurate, though. Snapperhead pours hazy orange-copper with a slight head. This tastes a lot like other American IPAs, but without the pine or grapefruit hit at the end. It's not a pale ale -- it does bring a full flavor -- and it's not an English IPA. It's more like an American IPA that seems unfinished. There's a lot of mostly grainy malt, and some hops too, but really bitter. You could make a case that this one's balanced and all the other IPAs are not. Overall, I like it, but it's sure to piss off a lot of the hopheads.

Cooperstown Back Yard India Pale Ale (NY)

The most important point that can be made about Back Yard IPA is that it is not a West Coast hop bomb. It's not even an East Coast hop bomb, but instead is something closer to a traditional British IPA (not a surprise from this brewery). This is, presumably, one IPA that won't be affected much by rising hop prices.

According to the brewer:

English pale barley malt is predominant in this beer with just a small amount of crystal malt. It is well bittered with Cluster and Cascade hops and finished with a mix of local hop and larger amounts of Fuggle hop.

The malts probably beat out the hops here, and there's slight Ringwood yeastiness as well. To me, it's grain and grass, with a touch of citrus hops coming through at the end. Overall, it's subtle, or maybe just quiet, and doesn't tip it's hand too far in any one direction. I checked the comments at the big review sites, and unsurprisingly, there's a lot of complaining about the low hop content. Judging it by what it tries to be, I think it comes across better, but still isn't essential drinking.

Southern Tier IPA (NY)

Southern Tier Brewing has only been around a few years -- Lew Bryson's 2003 book New York Breweries doesn't even mention it -- but has already become one of New York State's top breweries. They're apparently doing a great job with distribution. My nearby Wegmans has shelves stocked with Southern Tier bombers near the back of the produce department (it's also sold in the walk-in beer cooler). I imagine any brewery would love to have that space.


Southern Tier makes a number of "special" beers, but this IPA is one of their standards. The name of the game here is balance. This isn't particularly bitter, not because it lacks flavor, but because it has other things going on. The hop bite is citrus and (to a lesser extent) pine. There's a malty backbone to it as well, and it leaves a pleasant, long aftertaste. I could drink a bunch of these. I recommend this highly, except perhaps for those who want their IPAs to be extreme. For newbies, I would think this would make a great introduction to the style.

Ithaca Excelsior! IPAbbey (NY)

This is the second of four Excelsior! beers I've tried. The bottle is numbered 755 -- I grabbed this particular one because it was the week Bonds tied Aaron's record. Ithaca's informative brewer's blog says "basically, IPAbbey is one hoppy-ass beer fermented with a Trappist yeast rather than the more traditional American or English strains."

It pours somehwere between orange and amber with an off-white head that sticks around for a while. The aroma is sweet and citrusy. I like the body of this: creamy and lighlty carbonated (the brewer says this will be "tweaked" in future batches, but I kind of like the lower level). Other reviews I've read say this is more IPA than Belgian Abbey, and I think they're right. Still, It doesn't taste "hoppy-assed" to me, or at least it doesn't taste bitter. There's a noticeable sweet/fruity element to it, and it doesn't have quite so much of that grapefruit aftertaste. It's nicely balanced, and the aftertaste is long and dry. As far as the alcohol is concerned (9%), it's not really noticeable until you've hogged the whole bottle yourself. This really is more of a sipper.

Ultimately, this is a very good beer, better than White Gold IMO, and worth buying even at the $8-9 price.

Wagner Valley IPA (NY)

The Finger Lakes area winery Wagner began brewing beer about a decade ago. In his book New York Breweries, Lew Bryson quotes the brewer as saying that their wine customers enjoy their beer, but not hoppy ones. Maybe this explains why this India Pale Ale was a somewhat late addition to their line of beers.

This pours an copper-orange color with a dirty white head. I caught a whiff of citrus and maybe herbs. The palate seems fine at first -- medium body, tight carbonation -- but it didn't seem to fill my mouth completely. Maybe this is an issue of taste. It didn't seem completely rounded out to me, hitting me on the top of the mouth, but not the tongue. After sampling, I came online to see others were saying about this, and was surprised to see that many rate this as a bit of a hop bomb. I didn't really see it that way (variations among bottles?). It does have a pleasant citrus flavor with a grassy or piney touch too it, but is less potent than most other IPAs I've had and even a few APAs. I don't sense the 6.2% ABV either (which isn't a criticsim). Overall, a beer that merits only a subdued recommendation from me.

Stone Ruination IPA (CA)

A world apart from the hippy dippiness of Flower Power is the gargoyle imagery of Stone Ruination India Pale Ale. This was only recently made available in 12-ounce bottles. I think I paid $3.50 for a single.

The matriculated imbiber is not numb to the rambunctious rash of bitterness --- indeed that is a major element of the allure --- however they are also able to look beyond the well spoken yet understated malt presence.

No, these aren't the prentice musings of a beer blogger in training. It's from the back of the bottle. I've never seen a beer with so much back of the bottle text. A lot of it is hop head machismo, although there is a helpful warning about keeping your distance unless you are a "confirmed hop head." This isn't the brew to use to convert your Corona drinking buddies to "serious" beer.

The beer pours a clear orange/gold color with a head that isn't purely white. You don't have to stick your nose in it to smell it. The hops are very big (100+ IBUs indeed), but also varied. Some citrus, some floral, maybe some herbal touches. I also tasted a bit of malty sweetness. I honestly didn't find it to be as bitter as other IPAs or even pale ales I've tried. The body is medium-to-full with nice tight bubbles. I could really feel the alcohol (7.7% ABV); this could warm you up on a cold evening. All told, I like this a lot, although not as much as the die hard hop heads do.

Ithaca Flower Power IPA (NY)

This is the last of the four for me to try from my Ithaca summer pack. The website claims this was part of their winter variety pack as well. I'd think that most American breweries would have an IPA year-round given the popularity of the style, but maybe it's over-crowded.

This IPA pours a nice clear goldenrod color with a decent head. I think my neighbors could smell the citrus. I was surprised to see the brewer talks about this as having floral (well, look at the name) and herbal hops, although they do mention fruitiness. To me, the taste is predominantly of grapefruit, somewhere in the neighborhood of the pale ales from Smuttynose and Ellicottville. Flower Power is a lot higher ABV (7% vs. 5% for Smuttynose, 5.5% for EBC), which isn't really noticeable. Of course, it's an IPA, not an APA. In addition to the citrus, Flower Power in fact does have a bit of a floral taste, and generally has more going on than does the Ellicottville.

I think this is the best beer from the summer pack, although I might drink Partly Sunny instead depending on my mood. Would I buy this 12-pack again? No, but being a beer rater and admittedly a bit of a lightweight drinker, I don't have time for much re-purchasing. I'd like to recommend buying some of these Ithacas individually, but I think only the Apricot Wheat is available outside the variety pack. That's the weak link to me (but it's their best seller).