What with Christmas stampeding up and two young children stampeding about the place it’s all been rather hectic – hence the small hiatus in my postings. But never fear, I’m back for a couple more before we all end up teetering on the brink of yet another new year.
Does anyone have a clue what happened to to 2013? It was all a bit of a blur…
Anyway, I was lucky enough to be given a Saltaire Stateside IPA when visiting friends near Wallingford.
Now, I now that we’ve had some US IPA pretenders over the last few weeks, but this is one Yorkshire-made beer that almost pulls it off…
Stateside poured a clear amber-copper colour with a lively white head that disappeared very rapidly. No haze in the beer – which normally means that it’s not been dry-hopped nearly enough…but I guess the English are used to having bright beer, so bright beer they shall have.
The aroma was quite malty with some decent enough hoppiness and a leading edge of citrus.
Upon tasting, a reasonable carbonation made way for a solid maltiness and a really excellent bitterness. Crisp citrussy hoppiness popped about in the mouth and complemented the bitterness – which helped to stitch the whole package together quite neatly.
Well worth it. I enjoyed it enormously. It’s not quite a US IPA – but it’s certainly the best with these sort of pretensions I’ve had in a while.
