Bristol Edge City Double IPA

Bottle. A very hoppy ale with one of the best hop aromas I have come across. A very cloudy and mild to heavy body with a light whiteish head. The hop variety used here is great.

Courtesy of Styles

Bottle: The aroma has lots of caramel in the aroma with some mild citrus hops and apricot. It pours a cloudy dull dark orange with a small creamy off-white head. The flavor has a strong creamy caramel backbone. There is some light fruitiness in the background. The finish has mild notes of grapefruit with some light oxidation in a positive way. Soft creamy mouthfeel.

Thanks to John at the brewery. 22 oz. bomber. Pours hazy dark gold with a white chunky head. Superb, over-the-top hop nose, very floral, and spice-cabinet nose. Tasty, bitter, hop palate with enough malt balance to make this drinkable Full body that holds all the way. Very nice beer from some good guys at Bristol.

My time in Colorado Springs is up. Sad too, because it is where my interest in beer was delicately fostered and nurtured, and where I came to meet likeminded beer enthusiasts. To commemorate the parting from college and the community my roommate and I, destined for different parts of the earth, had a local brew from a local brewery – Bristol’s Edge City Double IPA. The head is lump and crenellated like the jagged paper-cut scenery of a street side puppet theater. The body is very deep and clouded with sediment, brunette in color with a cap of red near the head. If a beer could look studious, then this is it. The aroma is unlike any other IPA I’ve had, profuse with the aromas of a busy Italian kitchen. The smells of bread and olive oil are the most welcome, but capers make a warmly received appearance as well. The hops character is distinctly European, lacking the bitter grapefruit of American style pale ales. A peculiar fruity spritz appears too, conjuring a sassafras, root beer and beet diaspora about the nose. I also detect the distinctive smell of soft, uncooked pretzel dough and some pine resin. Last, and most curious, is a comforting whiff of fabric softener, giving the beer a clean but not sterile quality. My first thought on tasting the Edge City is that it is mild for the style. Previous Double and Imperial IPAs have been masochistic self-mutilations, especially where quantities larger than small sips are concerned. As for the flavor, it reminds me of a good, viscous barbeque braise with honey and apple wood chips, pineapple juice, pine sap and a healthy dose of toffee. It’s all sticky flavors without the pain of lactic acid flooding the jaw muscles. The palate is well suited to the taste, being full bodied, well weighted and the perfect amount of carbonation to permit subtler flavors through. There’s no tongue lashing, no needle points, no pain at all. Imagine that. Nothing here but a genuine good tasting beer, perfect for conversational drinking. How happy I am to finally meet a Double IPA that accommodates my palate, not whips and tortures it. And how suitable too, to end my Colorado Springs beer career on something I never could have swallowed at the beginning of it all. Cheers to that, and cheers to a rich and sometimes taxing four years at college.

Bomber shared with Duane. Thanks Dad. Copper/amber colored pour with a HUGE white head. A vigorous pour isn’t really necessary for this one. Nice, almost fruity hop punch to it with plenty of malt to back it up. Alcohol was well hidden. Very mellow, easy drinking IIPA.

bomber courtesy of BeerandBlues2, thanks Brad. hazy amber brown with a big head. floral and grassy aroma. flavor is more malt than I expected, but still a great drinking IIPA. alcohol is very well hidden for 10.9%! very nice. get it while its fresh!

22 oz bottle via Beer&blues2 (thanks!). This one pours a hazy amber with a medium sized beige head. Nose is mostly pine and graepfruit. Taste is not at all what i expected from the aroma. It is actually very sweet, caramel, molasses, honey, a little toffee. The hops are there but are subdued. Perhaps this is an older bottle, although i have kept in in the friege for the past 6 weeks. There is a tiny bit of sourness and butterscotch as well. Carbonation is moderate, body is full. Syrupy mouthfeel. I like my IIPAs hoppier/fresher. As a Barleywine this would be ok, but as an IIPA, I am ot feeling it.

Pours with an almost three-finger thick, tan colored head that has some staying power to it and even leaves a pretty, layered lacing pattern on the sides of my glass as it slowly subsides. The beer is a brilliantly clear, bright red amber color, that shows an orangish tinge when held up to the light. The aroma is clearly hop dominated with bright citrus notes leading the way. Aromatic notes of sweet tangerine, bergamot, lychee, and mandarin orange are all here. There is a touch of herbal, pine-like character here (especially as one digs around a bit), but only just so as the aroma is quite smooth and citrusy overall (even almost a candied citrus character).

The taste is sweet and citrusy up front; notes of ruby-red grapefruit are quite prominent in the flavor. It has a nice, biting hop bitterness to it, but not so much that it becomes overly noticeable. This double IPA has chosen to focus on hop flavors and aromatics, which I prefer, rather than a dominating hop bitterness. Herbaceous, a touch of menthol and even a little bit of pine character round out the hop flavors. Clearly the citrus notes dominate though, notes of grapefruit, zesty oranges, fresh lychees and fragrant tangerine character are among the suite of citrus flavors. It is interesting how sweet I perceive this beer to be; much of it is a sweet fruitiness from the citrus-like hops because the malt is not all that noticeable. In fact this beer is quite quaffable and has quite a light mouthfeel, especially when compared to some of the sticky, way too chewy, double IPAs being made these days.

This is certainly aggressively hoppy, and even could be characterized as raw by someone who is more sensitive to hop character. I am quite enjoying this, and I really like how smooth the "aggressive" hop character is in this beer. This is one of those big beers that I am quite happy that it is in the 22oz format; a perfectly quaffable amount for this enjoyable brew. It is not light (in either the palate or mouthfeel department), but is certainly far from heavy. The beer coats my mouth with a palate coating note, yet still . As time goes on, the alcohol becomes quite a bit more apparent in the nose, but is still quite manageable. Speaking of alcohol, I just checked out the avb of this brew, I never would have guessed this was 10.9% by the flavor, it certainly hides it quite well.