Monteith's IPA

Bottle. Amber clear color with a white head. Dry crisp and malty aroma with vegetables, some citrus, syntetic dishwasher lemon. Sweet taste, low to medium soft carbonaion. Taste has a nice but low note of lemon & grape initially and a balanced and lasting bitterness. Hints of toffee and biscuits and cooked vegetables.

33 cl bottle @ Cosmic Comic Cafe, BBE 23.03.2015

Aroma is very sweet with fruit candy and caramel. Also some pineapple juice. Flavour is very sweet with glue, resiny tones, caramel, toffee candy and some odd metallic savor. At the end of the glass toffee candy tones take over. Oversweet IPA with some west coast wibes.

Clear yellow golden color with medium head. Aroma is cooked vegetables. Flavor is malt, caramel. Not ipa and tasty beer anyhow (www.ratebeer.com/beer/monteiths-brewers-series-india-pale-ale/183010/).

Golden colour with a white head. Medium carbonation. The label states ’IPA’ but at just 35 IBU, this is stretching the definition. Citrus and pine aromas typical of cascade hop usage sonera grassy with a smooth malt usage. Easy drinking, but not a good example of the style (www.ratebeer.com/beer/monteiths-brewers-series-india-pale-ale/183010/1/4/)

UPDATED: NOV 20, 2013 Monteith valt over het algemeen tegen. Ze weten heus wel te brouwen maar is naar mijn idee gebrouwen voor een groot publiek. Alles is erg vlak van smaak. Niet echt craftbeer te noemen (www.ratebeer.com/beer/monteiths-brewers-series-india-pale-ale/183010/1/5/).

Underwhelming IPA. Little happening on the nose and the flavours are quite thin. Disappears quickly (www.ratebeer.com/beer/monteiths-brewers-series-india-pale-ale/183010/1/8/).

IPAs, perhaps more than any other style of beer, need to be consumed fresh. There is a general attitude out there that beer is always best fresh, and always best on tap at your local bar. Largely, this is a misconception — many styles of beer will age and improve for years while sitting in your basement. But not IPAs. Much like references to goofy 90's anime series, hops do not hold up over time. IBUs will decrease by about half per year. Hop aroma and hop flavor decreases almost immediately. This is not to say that you shouldn't drink an IPA if it is two months old; most times an IPA will not taste "bad" even after a number of months. Unless, of course, it was stored improperly — I once had a bottle of Dogfish Head 60 Minute that tasted like barbequed shrimp. It's generally not a good idea to buy an IPA that has obviously been relegated to the dusty back shelf of some remote gas station for a year.

The fresher an IPA, the better it will be, and sadly, the best IPAs will lose their edge fastest of all. An IPA that was never very hoppy to begin with may remain largely unchanged for months, but something with an epic kickpunch of hop aroma like Heady Topper needs to be consumed within a couple weeks. This is partly why it is futile to debate the supremacy of an IPA brewed on the other side of the country, unless you go to that side of the country to drink it. I've been fortunate enough to try Pliny the Elder a few times now — always a month old, or more — and while it is obviously a very well crafted beer, nothing really set it apart from other great IPAs I've had. And I assume this would likely be different if I were drinking it fresh at the brewery.

So it is for this reason that you should especially support your local IPAs. Every state, every region, deserves a few great IPAs, so that locals there can enjoy something fresh with confidence. And please, brewers: give us some hint as to how fresh it is on the bottle (http://www.bear-flavored.com/2012/08/ibus-in-ipas-misconceptions-about-how.html).