Steel Toe Cold IPA

 Steel Toe Cold IPA.

6.7% ABV. Steel Toe Brewing, St. Louis Park, MN,

Phone Post #1. What is a Phone Post and why is this #1? I’ll tell you later.

Slightly cloudy, bright golden hue, small white head.

Big citrus in the nose, lemon and grapefruit, with a pinch of pineapple. 

In the mouth: startlingly smooth. Virtually no bitterness. Light body. Crisp and clean, with a hoppy undercurrent. Satisfies some of my requirements, ignores many others. 

Is Cold IPA the new hazy? Will it catch on or remain a fad? Personally, I couldn’t care any less, as long as Size 7 is still around. 

Fermented cold and hopped with a heavy hand. Steel Toe Cold IPA is a golden beauty that has a white foam stand with aromas of berry, dank pine, and candied pineapple. Finishes crisp and smooth with light bitterness, yet all the hop goodness. 

From the iPad: It was nearly 20 years ago that I first took notes on beer. It was Lion Stout from Sri Lanka, which a friend brought back from Chicago and gave to me. (Years later, at last, it was distributed here and I tapped it many times at the Blue Nile.) For months, I took notes with pen on paper, until I could get to a coffee shop with WI-FI, to log into BeerAdvocate and share my beer thoughts with the world. In 2003, I finally got a laptop and internet connection, and from there on nearly all of my reviews were written at home. If I had a beer only on tap at a brewpub, bar or brewery taproom, it did not find it’s way here. I would have to buy a crowler, growler, can or bottle and take it home to review. Why? Those are the rules. Part of it has to do with the distractions of that environment and some has to with not looking like a weirdo in public.

And that rule continued though the nearly 12 years of this blog. A few months ago, I lost my laptop. Unable to buy a new one, I started using my iPad for blog writing. Unfortunately, there were problems with this. Eventually, I tried the thing I didn’t want to do: writing and publishing on the iPhone and you know what? It’s not that bad. The iPad problems are gone and I don’t hate typing on the tiny keyboard that much. 

So, I thought, why not occasionally take notes at the bar on the beers I can’t or needn’t take home? Why not? Will the writing be that different? Maybe, but you know what?  So what. I’ve had so many beers that never appear here because of my stupid rules. It’s time to change some rules. 

This is Phone Post #1. There may be many more.