By Greg B.  Here in Maryland, we had our obligatory 2 weeks of cold weather.  From now until late March, the temperatures will hover in the upper 30’s and low 40’s, but even still, the feeling that spring is on the way is here (it was in the upper 60 last week!).  My indoor spice plants are growing, you can see some trees beginning to put out their first buds and brewers are beginning to look towards the summer beers.  In my head, I’ve got some IPA’s that I’m thinking of brewing, and with these thoughts came a desire to reconnect with the delicious style of beer, after a few months of mostly stouts, dark ales and heavy porters.  With this in mind, I saw a well named beer, the hop-a-lot-amus, in a store, and figured I’d give it a shot.  So here comes the review!

I poured the beer into my new favorite glass, the hefty beer mug.  There’s just something about holding a stein or a thick mug that is so appealing to beer consumption that sometimes it’s necessary to break away from what’s ‘appropriate’ for tasting beers and just get back to some basics.  The beer pours a beautiful dark orange color, with plenty of light tan and creamy head.  Some resinous pine and citrus are present on the nose, but the pine aroma is more dominant.  The beer has some pretty good mouthfeel, as sometimes the more resinous aromas with the pine are also indicative of a sweeter, more malt dominant texture (almost too syrupy).  This beer, however, hits the style pretty well.  Pine flavors and aromas are dominant, but while the beer is not too sticky in texture, it has enough malt backbone to hold up to the intense hops and nice bitters at the finish.  In wine, you might call this structure.  In beer, we call it backbone (or at least, I call it backbone!).  This is a good, easy drinking IPA, trending towards the more bitter end of the scale, but still a good session beer.  3.3/5,