Seaward tasting notes

First bottle of Seaward is carbed after 8 days in the bottle. I started drinking it with my dinner, which was venison steaks from one of my dad's deer cooked up in butter with a touch of garlic and salt...absolutely delicious. This beer goes extremely well with it, accentuating both the beer and the venison.

Now...the beer. My palate's returned to normal so this is the unadulterated tasting of this very fresh 6.8% 7 hopped IPA. As a reminder, this is a single American IPA styled beer with a touch of colored cara malt to get the color approaching amber. The highlight was the 1 oz each of 7 "C" hops. Crystal, Columbus, Cascade, Centenniel, Citra, Chinook, and Cluster hops were the victims, and my batch was dry-hopped on 1 oz of whole leaf citra for 2 weeks.

The color is beautiful. It's somewhere between Two Hearted (a very pale IPA) and Moundbuilder (more typical amber color). The smell is pretty good. I was hoping for more hop aroma, but what is there is really good. The cascade, centenniel and citras were the last few additions, so it is dominated with citrus notes.

The flavor is light and balanced. The hop flavor is almost delicate. The malty sweetness on the finish is definitely delicate. The transitions are smooth and complex. There is a grapefruit note that pokes through most aggressively, similar to Two hearted, although a little tamer. This beer finished clean and dry.

Our mash temp was a little low (which is why we missed 7%) but that may have actually helped this beer. This ended up lightening the body a little and this beer is borderline sessionable. I'm sure I'll test that statement at some point (Friday Shenanigans perhaps? or possibly watching my Spartans kill some Badgers).

I am unbelievably pleased with how this beer turned out. It's going to be difficult to do it again with the booming popularity of Citra with actual breweries. If I did it again I'd maybe bump all of the hop quantities up to try to make it a little more aggressive. On the flavor alone it actually wouldn't be out of place in an American Pale Ale category, although the ABV obviously places it solidly in the IPA realm.

I'm happy to say that Sean is considering sending some bottles to competition next year. When we get results back I'll bring this beer up again.

-J