Day Two: IPA
India Pale Ale | Goose Island Brewing Co | Chicago IL



Goose Island is a brewery I used to lean on more heavily way back in the days when there were only a few options in town besides Bud/Miller/Coors products. If you wanted something exotic, you had your choice of either Sam Adams Boston Lager, Summit Pale Ale, Goose Island Honkers Ale, and that was about it. The craft beer revival was still years off, no-one outside of England had ever heard of an IPA, and Goose Island was a big fish in a small pond. Now, of course, there are fish aplenty to choose from, so I don't pay Goose Island much mind, except when I can get my hands on their exceptional Bourbon County Stout.

And of course, just like everybody else, they have their token IPA, which I never had any reason to try, what with the overrepresentation of the style in virtually every market. So I guess I can thank this advent calendar for finally getting me to try it. Lets see what this one has to offer.

Appearance wise, it pours rather light for an IPA, a very light copper. Great head retention and legs. A half hour and there is still plenty of both. The first sip starts sweeter than I was expecting, a sorta saccharine sweet you get from white sugar, though thankfully not cloying. Hardly any caramel notes to speak of. For an IPA, the bitterness is subdued, giving way to granny smith apple, a bit of the sorta pepperiness you get with arugula, and... it took me a while to put a finger on it, but reading the can and seeing mention of grapefruit, what it seems to me I am tasting is grapefruit rind.

What is killing my enjoyment of this, tho, is the finish. That grapefruit rind lingers way longer than it should, and, in the end, when the rest of the flavors fade, the taste left in my mouth smacks of detergent. This is not the sorta beer you want to drink without something to chase it with to clear your pallet. You shouldn't need to have to do that with a beer, and with plenty of other IPAs out there that don't fart on their way out the door, there really isn't any reason for me to try this beer again.

I'm gonna stick this one with a 2: disappointing / minor flaws.

2 down, 22 to go!