Tasting Notes: Breckenridge 471 Small Batch IPA

I enjoyed this Colorado beer with our Frito pie dinner. I do enjoy the IPAs with spicy food, though this chili wasn’t as spicy as it would be if we weren’t serving it to our four children!

Here are my tasting notes: Light, hazy, copper color with gentle carbonation. Thin head but consistent lacing well after the pour. Apricots, citrus, and strong piney hop smell. Sits full and bitter on the tongue. The strong hops are offset by sweet malts, but still overall is the bitter taste you would expect from an IPA. Tastes of sweet malts, orange peel, and bread. Dry and bitter but clean finish with little aftertaste but a warm alcohol burn in the back of the throat.

I wouldn’t call it a “double IPA“. It’s not really as hoppy or bitter as the double IPA’s I’ve had. In fact, in terms of bitterness, without knowing the IBU’s, I’d say this is a fairly straightforward IPA—but a fine example nonetheless. (In fact, I’m not really sure that “double IPA” should be its own style; it has the feel of a marketing gimick to me.)

I will pay the Breck 471 a high compliment and say that it compares favorably to the popular (and rightly so) Dogfish 60-Minute IPA and Dogfish 90-Minute IPA. I do prefer both Dog IPAs, which are simultaneously more sweet and more bitter than this. But this is a supreme example of the IPA style.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 2:52 am and is filed under Tasting, Colorado Beers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.