From San Diego, CA comes AleSmith IPA (a 7.25% IPA, poured from a bottle while visiting Seattle).
Aroma and Appearance: Pours a nice copper colour, very clear with some good foam and a mix of tangerine, grapefruit and piney aroma.
Flavour: Smooth, piney and malty sweet citrus upfront with a bitter IPA finish and a grapefruit aftertaste. Well balanced, easy to drink and the higher alcohol content is not noticeable.
Overall Impression: its funny, the rating in ratebeer.com surprised me..is this really the #2 IPA in the world? I mean, it’s pretty good stuff and likely perfect to style and I would gladly drink it again, but not the #2 IPA. There are more interesting IPA’s out there that I find to be better than or more interesting than this one, but still it is pretty good stuff. I also prefer my IPA’s to be a bit cloudy and not so crystal clear (I am impartial to re-fermented beer).
Rating: I would easily rate this as 8/10 for a craft beer as in excellent, I would buy it and drink again, but won’t worship it like some people online do.
Food Pairing: IPA’s normally go well with spicy food, but for this one I’d suggest a well crusted steak.
Reminds me of a certain IPA in BC that everyone swears in the best and I think it is just good.
Very much so, that one is good, but seems to be worshiped by many for some reason.
Glad we agree.