McLaren VALE/IPA

Brewed by McLaren Vale Beer Company - Willunga Brewery
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
McLaren Vale, SA, Australia

Serve in Shaker, Tulip

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Pours a dark copper color with a fair head that fades to bits of lacing. Aroma of pine with some caramel sweetness and bit of grain. Taste has some pine with bit of citrus, caramel sweetness and a trace of grain. Nice bitterness and a clean finish. Medium body, crisp and quite smooth. Nice IPA, nothing fancy.

Having difficulty with the consistency of the palate. This beers differs in taste as I progress thruogh the 24 pack. I have maitained the temperature of the beer and only refrigerated once. Some have a over bitter finish which makes you need to drink more to wash it away. Maybe a marketing tool. Overall even with the better bottles it was a little disappionting especially for price.

Bottle thanks to my nephew. Pours a amber colour with foamy somewhat offwhite head. Aromas of citrusy hops and some light sweet malt. Flavours are somewhat sweet up front with only a slightly bitter finish.Carbonation is a little too high in my view.

I’m in a mood for hops and so expectation is fairly high. This was brought back from Melbourne’s F1 GP by a very good friend of mine and she has done her best to find an array of beers that will suit my palate. Has she got it right? I poured all of the bottle right into the glass and was rewarded with a cloudy smudge of yeast into the body of the beer, otherwise it would have been bright and clear. Not to worry, I can appreciate unfiltered beer. The aroma is so typically Pacific NW IPA that the spruce, aromatic orchard-fruit like malts and herbal grassiness more than amply reward my expectations. The body of the beer was sort of over-ripe apricot in colour and there was only a film of greyish head, but I smelled it first, so my expectation has not been coloured by a fairly ordinary appearance. A taste reveals first a spritzy carbonation and then a flush of American hops and elegant pudding fruit malt. It is a tasty morsel on a slice of puff pastry with just a niff of sprucy hoppiness the whole way through. My feeling is that if this beer was filtered, it may just be the best example of an Australian/American IPA I have experienced. As it sits, it still punches above its weight.

light amber color. Moderately hoppy , dry, somewhat fruity. Fairly plain IPA.

Pours an amber colour with a tall frothy off-white head. Aroma is sweet fruit; mainly grapefruit with some hoppiness and pine. Taste is medium sweet and nicely balanced out with a fruity and bitter hop finish. Not too shabby.

The nose has earthy, metallic flavours with some butter, floral notes and pine. The thing that stands out upon drinking is the dull metallic flavour that coats your tongue - oddly enough, I quite like it. There’s also a reasonable amount of citrus, although closer in quantity to what you’d like in a good APA rather than an IPA. Not a bad beer. I remember disliking the Vale Ale quite a bit, but I’ve given this a similar score. Getting harsher in my old age?

Got a 4-pack of this from my local for the first time. Not too bad, a bit light for an IPA IMO, certainly toned down a bit to accommodate non-craft beer drinkers. But, it had some good hop aroma and was well brewed.

Dark amber colour with a crispy white head. Distinct aroma of hops with some caramel and pine. Also some toffee, roasted malts and sweet notes. Taste of hops with some sweetness, caramel and light green notes as of pine and grass. Light bitterness (not much for an IPA). Good mouthfeel; medium creamy with a smooth but dry feeling. Some fruitiness, posssibly orange.