Beer # 66 10 Point IPA

10 Point IPA


Lake of Bays Brewing Company
Baysville, Ontario, Canada (Independent)
India Pale Ale 6.0% ABV Brown Glass Bottle 750 ml.
$8.95 (Canadian) At LCBO.

Twitter @LB_Brewing

It is a pleasure to return again to a (relatively) new and upcoming brewery: Lake of Bays Brewing Company. Previously, I have blagged about their excellent Mocha Porter, their winter seasonal. I was pleasantly surprised to see this in my local LCBO tonight and decided to give it a try. This time of year an IPA is an excellent choice. It's a "clearing of the cobwebs beer." Just bitter and fruity enough to shake off the tongue numbing high alcohol heavy flavoured winter beers; and wake our senses up for the light aerie, wheat, weisse, and patio sippers to come when the temperature dial starts to climb.


The bottle itself is striking (I noticed it across the store... Job well done marketing department!) Vivid colours of gold and red on a dark glass 750ml bottle which seems to be the vessel of choice for Ontario Craft brewers these days (not complaining). 


Aside from all of that... Onto tonight's tasting:

It pours dark copper to slightly dun coloured with an off white, slightly tan head made up of tight bubbles. Plenty of hops on the nose, herbal, floral, and a hint of tropical fruit. Grapefruit on the attack, giving way to a deeply toasted malt, candy and burnt sugar. Very earthy for an IPA, yet still cleansing and refreshing. Finish is crisp and very clean with just a hint of the grain lingering on the tongue.

Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional
                                                                                                               


Cost:  5/6  PASS
Colour:  5/6  PASS        
Beer Style:  5/6 PASS 
Re-Order:  5/6 PASS   
Experience:   5/6  PASS





Final Thoughts:                         


With a healthy balance of bitter and sweet, this has turned out to be a very solid offering from Lake of Bays. A little less hoppy, than the other Craft breweries who are taking a page from Spinal Tap and turning the hops up to "11." A practice I am not arguing with as it does make an excellent IPA, with one downfall, the hop-bombs are hard to drink, more than one or two and you are hit with a sensory overload that leaves you screaming for a Molson or (god forbid) a Coors.... Lake of Bays may have found a nice balance between the two. They have found a way back into my beer cooler... any day.

Cheers


CJT

Back On Track

Well dear reader it has been a long, wet and dismal winter, which translated into a long running stuffy nose and general exhaustion here at Pint Jockey Headquarters. Unfortunately this is not the best environment to be tasting beer. Valiantly I tried, horribly I failed. So I have in my possession a number of half-written posts that I would like to clear up over the next week, so bear with me as some may not be as informative as I usually try to make them. I will intersperse them with a number of new beers that have been languishing in my wine cooler, awaiting tasting. Basically I need room in the cooler for the BBQ wines for the summer... Entertaining season is upon us!

Without further ado... onto a series of tastings I am very excited about!

Just remember you can keep up to date with all my shenanigans here at Pint Jockey Headquarters via Twitter @pintjockey ( I can be quite witty in 140 characters or less ) or like me on Facebook here