Ithaca Cascazilla

Bottle from Capone’s. Deep coppery pour with some ruby tinged edges and a 1-finger off-white head. Aroma is heavy tangerine, mango, black pepper, hops, and caramel malt. The flavor is caramel malt, hops, black pepper. Medium palate that gets a bit acidic at the finish, and seems to need some more malt. Also, I got no hint of any red aley qualities in this. Good, but with some minor recipe tweaks this could become outstanding.

Sampled on draft this beer poured a red-amber color with a medium sized khaki head. The aroma was grapefruit and not much else. The flavor was dry nutty malts and grapefruity hops. Very one dimensional.

Bottle
Appearance :Dark amber with decent tanned fairly creamy head.3+
Nose :Green hop nose with earthy sub profile
Flavour/Palate: Blend of malt and semi raw hops with hint of nutty earthiness. Average.

Rating #1700... simply because I didn’t want to break up my latest string of vacation reviews.

A deep vermillion/amber body shows thickness without haze and is constantly effervescent under a thick, creamy and long-lasting ecru head. Lovely citrus nose is both bitter & sweet and overall fruity with a healthy dose of orange rind, pulp & fruit along with hints of lemon and tea. Grapefruit, however, is the fruit of choice in the flavor. Along with pepper & pine, this makes for a well-made IPA with bitterness that lasts well into the finish. MIldly astringent and seemingly watery as my glass goes down, but that may be simply due to the fact that my mouth is watering. This is about as intense as I want an IPA to be, one which would be considered "sessionable" by my hop-headed friends with seemingly indestructible taste-buds.

<----(P.S. I really hope that’s a stove & not a dashboard in the photo...)

<font size=-4>Single 12 oz. bottle from <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Place/new-york/albany/oliver%92s-beverage/439.htm>Oliver’s Beverage, Albany, NY 12208</font>

Draught at Gingerman NYC. Very small off-white head. Nice strong hoppy aroma. Somewhat sweet nose. Citrusy. Light-bodied. Notes of caramel. Smooth texture with a nicely balanced caramel flavour and a light carbonation. Nutty. Little bitterness, and very little in the aftertaste.

Hazy red body, off-white creamy thick head. Interesting aroma... fruity hops that almost have a bright, fruity brett character. Maybe it isn’t brett, but it is a fleshy, tomato-like thing that maybe I’ve noticed in a bretty beer. Fizzy body, fleshy fruit hops. Some toasty malt. It isn’t too bad, but just not in my alley. The flavor is kind of old tasting, but I’m not sure it was there to begin with. That and the fizziness makes it awkward.

On tap at the Fuel and Fuddle in Oakland, Pittsburgh. Pour is brown like darker iced tea or lighter root beer. Floral hop aroma. Do you know what chewing on green grapefuit peels tastes like? Well if you don’t give this stuff a try. Oppressive and overpowering in the hops category, a little too much for my girlie taste buds. IMHO most IPAs are one sided, and so is this so I guess it’s a good example of it’s style. Medium hop bitterness keeps going and going on the finish. Overall, just like many IPAs I’ve had the pleasure of tasting, rather objectionable.

Great beer. Enjoyed the dry host taste till the end. Small hint of malt, but gets topped off my a great hop taste at the end.