Beer of the Week! 03/22/22

Elder Pine Enthrall Hazy IPA

Regularly $18.99 / Now on Sale for $17.96
Hazy IPA Brewed with Spelt

We are excited to have a new beer from Elder Pine Blending & Brewing from Gaithersburg, MD! It’s a zesty unfiltered IPA with a couple of twists …

The Enthrall distinguishes itself right off the bat with its malt bill, 40% of which is spelt malt, spelt being one of the least common of beer-friendly fermentable grains. It’s an heirloom variant of wheat that’s higher in protein than modern wheat giving off a nutty flavor and higher acid content. We’ve encountered it in Belgian beers but can’t remember having seen it used for an American IPA before.

The second twist of the brew for the Enthrall comes in its hopping. It’s dry-hopped with Azacca and BRU-1 — a Yakima Valley hop that gives off pineapple and stone fruit aromas. However, for bittering Elder Pine uses Ekuanot hops, except … not quite. Turning to hop technicians John I. Haas, Elder Pine bitters their Enthrall with Ekuanot Incognito. “With Who-to-the-what?” you say.

Incognito is a hop extract developed by Haas which has created a process that extracts from hops the oils and acids that brewers use for their beers. Using this extract, brewers can avoid the hop vegetative matter which absorbs and carries away wort that could otherwise become beer. The goal, thus, is to make brewing more efficient while maintaining hop taste.

The Enthrall is certainly not short on Eukanot flavor. It boasts a citrusy, herbaceous bitterness that sits on top of a malt backbone that has a strong suggestion of smoke. Not your average hazy, the Enthrall is one of the more unique IPAs we’ve had in a while.

Bonus Beer of the Week (‘Cause we have just enough cheek to run another beer this week!)

Fat Orange Cat
She Drives a Second Generation Four-Door Plymouth Satellite

Regularly $19.99 / Now on Sale for $18.96
Double New England Style IPA

Okay, we suspect that your first question will be what our first question was — the name? Well, you see, Fat Orange Cat Brew Company from East Hampton, CT once brewed a New England Style IPA made of Citra, Simcoe, and Galaxy hops called the “She Drives a Plymouth Satellite.” What we have here (is not “a failure to communicate” but) is the double version. So why not have double the name?

It should be no surprise from its hop content that the She Drives a Second Generation Four-Door Plymouth Satellite boasts both citrusy and tropical fruit flavors. Balancing those two hop profiles is nothing new for an NEIPA, but Fat Orange Cat manages to work them at the same time. We don’t know; maybe we’ve been asleep at the wheel, but that seems new to us. It’s not like you have juiciness on the front and citrus on the finish. The citrus notes sit high on the top of your palate while the tropical fruit notes float simultaneously underneath them.

We guess she needed all four doors to pack all that hop flavor in.

Remember!

You can see our entire beer inventory on Untappd.com!