This fine Pennsylvania creation comes highly recommended from Summer of Beer Steve.I sampled it tonight out of a 12 oz bottle poured into a standard pint.
Right away this thing carries the smell and aroma of an IPA. True to form, the bottle promises a "hopheads nirvana", with "93ish IBU's". There was a modest if undistinguished head with the pour, and it displayed an orange-amber color.
Heavily hopped beers like IPA's tend to carry a "piney" or "citrusy" aroma. Sometimes that's true, sometimes it isn't as I think there's a third smell I can't quite name. However, this time the aroma was most definitely piney. What that means for you I don't know, but it's normal and unoffensive to my general experience.
My general impression is that this has a residual hop taste. It isn't overpowering by any means, but it lingers on. For the IPA nut and "hop heads" this is part of the experience but obviously for the untrained taster it can be disconcerting. I should point out that this isn't an IPA, but rather an Imperial Amber, but the experience is about the same.
Other notes:
Initial tasting comes in real sweet, but as stated above there's a rapid bitter/piney flavor that lingers in the mouth. This is a good beer to sit down with and then wait a few minutes. I finished 90% of my pint and then went to the business of writing this. As I gulped down that last mouthful it suddenly tasted a hell of a lot better. That's kind of how wine works sometimes, so this beer is in good company if you've got patience.
Like another one of my recent tastings, this was a holdover, older bottle that had been hiding in my fridge for a while and sometimes time doesn't do good things to beers like this. That said, this tasting was consistent with the other, fresher bottles of my Nugget Nectar six-pack I'd tried.
Here's the review from Beer Advocate (4.37/A, very well regarded!), and here's a glowing review from Summer of Beer.
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