Sweetwater IPA

Sweetwater IPA.

6.3 % ABV, 50 IBU, Sweetwater Brewing, Atlanta, GA. 

This here beer is not available as a six-pack at the retail store where I currently work. I acquired it after someone damaged a variety 12-pack, and the surviving contents were sent to the singles shelf, and I purchased one, knowing it was needed in the Nib. And I looked way back to BeerAdvocate.com to discover that I'd received a bottle from a trading circle back in 2004, more than 17 years ago, and wrote these notes (then, not now)...

Nice, slightly hazy orane/apricottish hue, with a very generous helping of active foam bubbling above.

Aroma, wonderfully bitter hops greet the nose, grapefruit leads the fruit parade, orange, peach, apricot, but bitterness is king, a beautiful thing in the nose!

Taste is fresh, full, fruity, i reach readily for another sip, and happily, too, smiling all the way. Lordy, this is a happy, and hoppy IPA, oh, so, tasty and terribly rewarding in flavor beyond the bitterness!

Just delicious. Who needs Sierra Nevada PA when you're in Georgia, I say, this one matches that, and maybe even bests it, though they weren't even running a race! Yum, I say, yum, I mean, yum, I keep thinking until my tongue is no less than delighted.

Yep, that's what I wrote back in 2004, when this here market called the Twin Cities Metro was a desert for IPAs, or any kind of good beer, and I had to trade away whatever I could find, and when they sent me a decent IPA, I treated it like proverbial manna from the heavens. I left the exclamation points in this time, to prove how impressed I was with anything good and hoppy that I would find back then, several years before Surly started up. I gave this one a 4.2/5, a full 5.5 % above the mean. 

Drinking it now, it's good, very satisfying, but not much more than that. I recommend it, of course, but if I were taking new notes, there wouldn't be quite so many hosannas, or exclamation points. 

This mammoth IPA is defined by generous quantities of juicy American hops. The extensive dry hopping process contributes to its bright and flavorful character. This beer is unfiltered to leave all the natural flavors intact and bottle conditioned to stay super fresh.