Maine "Woods & Waters" IPA

These Maine beers are pretty expensive. As a result, I only get one of each. I'm not made of money. That said, if they could figure out how to reduce the price and increase the quantity, I'd probably start picking these up in six packs. They seem to be doing pretty well. It seems strange to me that a place so far east is putting out a regular IPA instead of a New England IPA, but I guess it just means that they respect the original style. Let's see how well they do with it.

The pale yellow beer is a little hazy, but there's still lots of light coming through. The head is significant straight out of the bottle, and this pour that you see pictured here took a couple of tries to get to this level. It takes a while for the bubbles to go down, and they do leave some lacing. What remains is a fairly significant, spongy layer of small and medium-sized bubbles unevenly caressing the top of the beer. The aroma is bright in citrusy. The lemon is right up front, and a somewhat spiky (or spiced) yeast is propping it up. It smells pretty crisp, and it smells pretty good.

First sip is somewhat baffling. The beginning of the beer really feels like it's going to be fairly hop heavy with the citrus and pine, and the malt is kind of crackery and fairly low key. As a result, the instantaneous reaction is to assume that it's going to get very bitter at the end, but then it never materializes. Instead, the yeast comes up to give a little kiss before very light spices trail away. This is a very intriguing beer, and I suspect it will do even better with a full swig.

Tip-in is carbonation sizzle atop the cracker malt, orange, grapefruit, and pine. The middle flows deftly into a thick layer of pulp and acid from the fruits sitting toward the top of the mouth while the mix of fruits, pine, malt, and very pronounced yeast swiftly streams underneath it. The finish is an abrupt dryness of pine with bitterness attendant.

Bottom Line: Not your standard IPA.

4.0/5