Full Sail Sunspot IPA

Brewed by Full Sail Brewing Company
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Hood River, Oregon USA

Poured a hazy golden orange with a medium off-white head. Aroma of sweet fruit and lightly citrused hop. Caramel underneath. Malt start turns to citrus juice with a long bitter finish that starts from mid way through. Semi-dry light-medium body.

2005 bomber. Pour is an amber color, with cream colored head. Aroma is an orange hop bouquet, and is pleasant. Flavor has strong bitter with very slight malty nuttiness and grapefruit citrus and pine at the top of the palate. Not much sweetness to balance out the bitter componant. Initial tastes were promising, as beer warms, it is MUCH better. Also, bitterness here is more like IPA levels, a bit high for the regular Pale Ale style. But, it is nice to know what Amarillo hops taste like, this beer really showcases them nicely. I think I’ll need to brew with them! (I understand this is a reformulation with more hoppiness than in previous years.)

Bottle. It pours a hazy dark orange color with some head and good lacing. Fruity orange aroma with good malt character. Nice hop bites with a good malt background with notes of orange, resin, and earth. Very drinkable IPA.

Light white head covers the hazy amber-orange pour. Very minty hops punctuate the otherwise quite fruity, orangey aromas, over a base of caramel malts. Spicy flavour profile surprises with its yeasty bite, but the impressive malt-hops balance steals the show. Complementing honeyed woodyness acts its miracles upon citrusy, limey, leafy and sawy hops that strike home with typical west coast bitterness. Intense small bubbles cleanse for the next sip, while the firm medium body betray a more than honest malt bill.

Pours a nice clear amber. Aromas of citrus and hops. Flavors of grapefruit and orange. Nice hop flavor with a spicy edge.

Dark orangy, with a head consisting mainly of soapy bubbles.
West coast aromas all the way, and nothing too over the top. Beyond the groves I found pine cones, x-mas trees and some kind of minty frankincense.
In the never ending battle of hops vs malt, both are quite poingant, but none seems to dominate, an aspect I tend to look for in an APA or IPA. Don’t get me wrong, the astringency is there in the finish and aftertaste, but the sweetness is there too, making it a well fought tie.

Pours a clear amber color with a thin white head. Appealing aroma of malt with good fruity and spicy hops. Very good flavor of toasted malt with the same fruity and spicy hops, the finish is bitter. The body is light with low carbonation. A very good IPA.

The Lure:
Resinous, grapefruity hops use sweet oranges to balance off their spiciness. Bold yet serene, an apt IPA presentation.

The Festivities:
Bready malts serve as pillows for the orangey hops and their portentous resinous bitterness. Wooden dryness leaks from the hops, but the sweet fruitiness is thankfully able to create equilibrium.

Transcendence:
Sun rays pierce the greyness.