High Peaks Imperial IPA

A golden amber ale with a thick lightly off white head. Aroma is big hops, citrussy and classy with light mentol. In mouth, this is a I2PA, with big bold hops, strong grapefruits, all over the top, making it rather astringent. A warming alcohol final. For 95 cents (CJs in Potsdam), its worth it in terms of ingredients. But this is totally unbalanced...id rather have a regular IPA, instead of this.

Clear copper amber body with a large frothy off-white head. Sweet fresh floral and citrus aroma. Sweet caramel and floral hops flavor.

Bottle. Copper color, white head. Aroma of hops. Flavor is packed full of hops, a lot of hops. Suprisingly I didn’t think that Saranac could make an IPA like this, especially a beer with such a high alcohol content, which was very well masked by the way.

2006 bottle consumed on 2/24/07
Fresh bottle leads to a large, somewhat dense off-white/light beige head that is mostly well-retained and even laces moderately. Still can’t hide the fact that it’s highly filtered (not even a chill-haze) and not bottle conditioned. Body is a dark amber, definitely showing lots of specialty/medium malts.
Fresh, citrusy nose also boasts pine and floral notes. Medium in strength, without any hard crystal maltiness behind it, so that’s a plus. Sticky caramel and toffee with maybe something like rye, as their seems to be a little bit of spiciness and perfume to it. Nothing unusual or unique, in the least, about the aroma though, and it seems like a dime-a-dozen IIPA. Too much bitterness and quite a high acidity as well, though not obnoxiously so. No interesting tropical fruits or overly juicy aromatics. Alcohol well-concealed.
Right away, a dull, plant-like, hop-tea flavor overbitters/acidifies things, while the filtration and hard malts do nothing to control the acidity. But the flavor, for the most part, is tolerable, with lots of candied oranges, floral bitterness and some light pine resin. Not too sweet, though definitely more caramel flavor than I’d prefer, and more than it seems to need for being only 8.5abv. Fairly dry, very bitter finish with some light melon fruitiness lingering. Light bubble gum sweetness mixes with the hops to provide some sweetness. Again, nothing sets this apart from any other standard double IPA and though it’s fairly well-done on the whole, the hops just seem too unidimensional and there’s too much of a bittering charge. Fairly light texture, but somewhat hard and filtered, leading to some wateriness on the end.

I hold a certain soft spot for Saranac in my heart and was very excited when I heard this was coming out. Poured into a small tulip glass with a small head. Color is copper with orange tints. Aroma is hoppy but just passable for a DIPA, soapy, wet forrest, grassy/piney hop. Weak stale hop taste, again a bit soapy. Leaves a bitter aftertaste. A bit of a muddled mess really.

I am number ten! - It is I that shall make this beer count! - first of all, let’s hear it for saranac being about 5 years behind the curve with respect to trends in craft beer - clear reddish gold pour, with a fairly impressive lace, especially from this brewery - quite a nicely balanced, herbal hop profile in the aroma, with loads of bright citrus fruits and hints of cherry - very piney/woody in the background - so far so good - the flavor is assertively bitter, but lacks sufficient malt complexity to balance it out (uh-oh, we’re in trouble) - there is some background sweetness, but it tastes like they filtered all the flavor out of it (much like the bottled version of brooklyn monster ale that they make) - the alcohol is far too evident, especially near the finish - the palate starts to pick up some bready qualities and a mellow caramel sweetness near the end, almost in time to salvage the promise the beer started with...almost - somewhat grainy finish, with a lingering alcohol burn - it starts strong but kind of peters out - a nice effort from these guys, though - I hope they try some more "experiments" like this.