Olde Saratoga IPA

By Kevin Burns, Beer Columnist

While debating what beer I should review for my ignaugural LENNDEVOURS post, I decided to combine Lenn's love of India Pale Ales and my location in Albany, NY.

With that in mind, I came up with the recently released IPA from the Olde Saratoga Brewing Company. Olde Saratoga may be best known for all of the contract brewing that they do for both local and out-of-state breweries, but they produce their own line of tasty brews.   

The Olde Saratoga Brewing Company IPA pours a clear, orange copperish color with a thumb-width white head. 

The nose offers up a strong blast of hops with a little caramel malt sweetness underneath. The first couple of sips reveal a malty taste with a decent amount of the sweetness from the nose returning. 

Hops start to make their trademark appearance in the middle of the body and grow more apparent as they lead to a really dry finish that lingers for quite a bit on the palate. 

Overall, this is a nice, solid, really dry, big hopped IPA. There is a big backbone and the body is fairly heavy which is a trademark of those higher ABV IPAs. This is a decent stand alone beer, but would be best with a hearty, spicy dish that can stand up to the beer. 

Producer: Olde Saratoga Brewing Company
ABV: 7%
Price: $2.15 (12 oz. Bottle)
Rating:  (3 out of 5 | Recommended)

(Ratings Guide)

Comments

[Dan]

Sounds hoppy but balanced. I like that in a IPA. Wonder if I can get it down here on LI. I have never seen it.

[Kevin Burns]

Olde Saratoga is distributed by DeCrescente Distributing which does not extend to Long Island. They are however tied into World Class Beverages who extends further so I will research this.