Estes Park Renegade

Brewed by Estes Park Brewery
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Estes Park, Colorado USA

Serve in Shaker, Tulip

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I thought it odd when I noted that this beer was still advertising a GABF win from 1993 (maybe time for a packaging update?), but it did make me curious (and wary that it hadn’t won anything more recently) enough to pick up a single at Liquor Mart in Boulder. It poured a dark amber with a head that seemed to settle upwards much like a Guinness. Aroma was decent...lightly fruity but hardly overpowering. Taste was rather average. Than I noticed a large number of floaties in my beer. This really bothered me - IPAs shouldn’t have floaties! This beer wasn’t aged, stored in a barrel, or secondary fermented, thus my opinion that floaties are not acceptable. I tried to let them settle-out, but they remained suspended in the liquid. I had a really hard time getting past this, and started to negatively effect my perceptions of this beers taste and mouthfeel, making me believe it was stale, cardboard-y, and weirdly slick. I’m not a fan. This bottle had no date nor code on it, so I’m left to assume it was brewery-fresh (delivered to Liquor Mart minutes before my arrival) and rate it as such.

Had this beer on 10/21/1998. Color is a deep orange/brown and very hazy. Carbonation is low with a good head. Aroma has a very strong hop scent to it. Taste is full of hop flavor and bitterness. It starts off with a medium body and a light hop flavor that becomes much stronger as it goes down. This hop flavor is a bit sharp and seems to taste a little like celery. The finish has a good bitterness to it and is full of hop flavor the only problem is that it’s that celery like taste instead of a nice fresh hop taste. Overall it is a well rounded beer with good body and lots of hops, but I don’t like the hops they used.

Had this one bottled thanks to Slothgar! Oily, opaque medium orange pour with only the faintest wisp of a head, plenty of piney hoppiness and a milky mouthfeel, nuanced, nice and bitter but not as sharp or dry as I like. This would make a great training-wheels pale ale.

Date: 08/19/2007
Mode: Bottle
Source: Tasting, Ticker Tasting

clear amber, wispy beige head, drippy lace, sweet sugary grapefruit aroma, lots of citrus hop flavor on a sweet caramel backbone, nice long balancing bitterness

Aroma: 7/10; Appearance: 7/10; Flavor: 7/10; Palate: 6/10; Overall: 13/20
Rating: 3.4/5.0
Drinkability: 7/10
Score: **+/4

Appearance: Pours a slightly hazy copper body with a white head. Smell: Hop-forward aroma of citrus, grapefruit. Small measure of caramel hiding in the background. Taste: Brief caramel malt sweetness before the juicy ruby red grapefruit takes over and carries through into the bitter finish. Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied. Mild carbonation. Drinkability: So yeah, while it’s not on the cutting edge of IPAs, it is decent.

Poured from the bottle a nice dark copper brown with very thin head. Quite a bit of sediment, some of which takes awhile to settle. Aroma is floral and hoppy with a caramel overtone. Decent malty body and strong hop flavors. Finish is a bit metallic and slightly sour, almost like grapefruit.

It was a wait to get this as they were out upstairs, but worth it. Welll hopped aroma and flavor with a nice sharp bitterness. Very refreshing on a hotter than average Estes Park day.

Poured dark amber, not much head. Nice hop aroma. Flavor is caramel malt and citrus and spicy(?) hops. Carbonation was kind of low. You can do better.

Purchased at Brennan’s Country Market in Middleton, WI. I was drawn to this beer while hand-picking a "Build Your Own Sixer" by the coyote on the label. I’m a fan of coyotes, wolves, and foxes, so naturally I thought I’d like this beer. I was impressed by the medal on the label claiming a top prize in 1993. Well, ’93 must’ve been a bad year for beer or people’s tastes have changed greatly since. It smelled nice and hoppy, but the first sip brought to the forefront the fact that this beer is flatter than a stout. I don’t need a beer to be over-carbonated by any means, but this one was like drinking a very bitter syrup with a bad aftertaste. To me, it tasted more like a medicine than a beer. I have gotten into pale ales in the last year, so I’m not a certified expert on the topic. However, this beer made me think "American Pale" more than "India Pale" somehow. I think it may be the hop composition that drew the similarity in my mind, but either way, I compared this beer to Tyranena’s Stone Tepee in flavor and nose. Even if Estes Park Renegade was an APA, I’d still rate it lower than average. But as an IPA? No thanks. Addendum: Other ratebeerians seem to enjoy this beer, so I may have gotten a bad bottle. The "best by" date was within range, but it may have had a variety of ailments befall it before I reached its shelf in the store. I’d certainly be willing to rerate this beer in the future.

Pour is a muddy amber color. This beer poured with an immense head that quickly diminished to a ring of lacy white bubbles. Aroma is fruity/hops with a nice bitter bite. Flavor is rich malts with a nice hop bite finish. A decent IPA.