Sunday, April 1, 2012

Sunday Night Suds - Saranac White IPA




This week's Sunday Night Suds looks at the newest offering from the good folks at Utica's Matt Brewery - White IPA.

Over the last six months it seems like every domestic craft brewery has made an attempt to produce a "different" IPA. These include Black IPAs, IPAs with a fruit infusion such as the Samuel Adams Whitewater IPA (reviewed here http://kosherbeers.blogspot.com/2012/03/sunday-night-suds-samuel-adams.html ) and IPAs with added spices, such as the Saranac White IPA.

The concept of adding flavor to an IPA is completely foreign to me and I have yet to wrap my head around why this has become an industry trend. IPAs are generally clean with a lot of floral hops providing the citrusy flavor. While Belgian IPAs are influenced by yeast strains, the recent domestic trend of adding fruit and spices to the IPA transforms the brew into something completely different.

The Saranac White IPA poured a cloudy orange and looked suspiciously like a hefeweizen. When bringing the glass to my lips, I could smell the hops as well as some spice (from the coriander). The first sip made me look back at the bottle to make certain that this was actually an IPA, but a few sips later I could begin to discern the characteristic IPA hop backbone which I know and love.

The label indicates that the beer was brewed with orange peel, coriander, wheat male and oats. The resulting flavoring yields a beer with an interesting set of flavors which defies classification in any neat category (notwithstanding the moniker White IPA). I will have to wait until after Passover to buy and try this with different foods, but I relish the opportunity to do so.

Saranac White IPA is under the Kosher Supervision of the Va'ad of Detroit, as is every other brew produced by Saranac. To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about Saranac White IPA, please follow this link http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/99/76375 .

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver.

If you've tried this beer or any others which have been reviewed on the kosher beers site, please feel free to post your comments (anonymous comments are acceptable).

Finally, if you have seen this post being carried on another site, please feel free to click http://www.kosherbeers.blogspot.com / to find other articles on the kosherbeers blogsite. Hey its free and you can push my counter numbers up!

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