Freedom Trail India Pale Ale

Pours deep gold with copper highlights and fluffy off white head. The aroma is big buttery bread and smacks you in the face. I also get toffee and then an astringency odor. If there’s some hops involved in the aroma they might be floral like and just overridden by the toffee covered breadiness. The taste is much like the aroma but the flavors don’t work well together. The toffee and fresh buttered bread are pretty nice. But then an abrupt spicy floral hop note breaks up the experience by driving a wedge into the flavor. Then a somewhat harsh astringency tears into he flavor leaving a shredded disjointed mess. This one really doesn’t work for me.

[Bottled at Monk’s Café, Stockholm] Bronze colour, creamy head. Rich hoppy aroma of grapefruit and apricot. Sweet with clean, rounded mouthfeel. Notes of caramel and a wealth of hop derived pineapples. Medium bitterness.

(Bottle at Delirium Cafe in Gothenburg) Clear brown color with a white head. Sweet malty scent. Sweet and bitter taste. High bitterness.

Best before Oct 2006 bottle consumed on 5/26/06.Foamy white head is formed from a large amount of forced carb. It does do quite the job, as it’s slow to recede and even provides light lacing. You can smell the sweet sugars and dextrins that create it, as well. The body is a bright amber-honey with deep notes of brass. Head fades to nothing and a ring, fairly rapidly though.The nose is butter and hops. So much hops that you almost don’t mind the butter. Simple, light crystal malts and tons of sweet pale malts certainly add balance. Leafy and herbal, with fresh wintergreen-like notes. Hoppy and quite well aromatic, but the butter invades.Quite hoppy, I suppose you could almost say assertively so, for an English hopped beer, but it tastes like some grapefruit as well. Tons of caramel sweetness balances and adds plenty of body, but the carbonation is large and loose. Quite bitter and not at all an incompetent IPA. Probably more to Shipyard keeping the recipe unchanged and less because it’s brewed by Shipyard. Without Shipyard’s poor use of Ringwood and the filtration and pasteurization, this could be some top-notch stuff. It’s certainly plenty more clean and dry than Shipyard’s Fuggles IPA. Not as insipidly sweet either, as the hops provide a high amount of cleansing bitterness and dry, herbal-citrus flavor. Smooth mouthfeel, fresh overall and well-attenuated. No alcohol noted in aroma or flavor.