Saturday, January 10, 2009

Founders Dry Hopped Pale Ale

Jimmy and I are doing some NFL playoff football beer reviews. Picked these up from the local store, nothing too special.

Appearance: Pours with a golden color, but the head was out of control. Someone must have shaken the bottles or something because we had to measure our head in fists. Bubbly, alive, and definitely keeps its sudsy head.

Smell: We had two different smells from two different bottles: Jimmy had a musty smell that overpowered any distinction between hops and malts, while I had some piney hops that grabbed you right away, dominating away any scent of malts.

Taste: A lot more mellow than the piney hops leads you to believe. Jimmy put it well saying the hops made you almost expect an IPA, but the mellowness of the pale ale really showed while tasting. A hint of sweet malts that weren't present in the smell come alive.

Mouthfeel: Pretty smooth, not biting, no carbonation attack which kind of allows the taste to shine, a slight bitter tang aftertaste, a little thin but not really watery.

Drinkability: The mildness allows you to drink a lot of it, but we feel like you would get bored after a while. Kind of bland in the sense that there's nothing left to explore after the first couple sips. Jimmy: "It's like you want to press Next on your iPod." At 5.2% abv you won't have to take a nap afterwards, but it will leave you looking for more. We both agreed without looking at each others answers of 6.5/10, decent beer, but probably won't go out of our way for it.

2 comments:

Jimmy said...

Had two of these brews during the Giants game this afternoon. The first one was exactly on par with the review; lots of head...fists of head. The second poured smoothly and you could really tell apart the dry piney hops. Not as resinous as a Sierra Nevada wet hop ale for example

Mike said...

Drowning in my sorrows from the Giants game, my experience was more like your second one. Still not much more than a decent pale ale, but will probably drink again.