Saranac Rye IPA

So as I mentioned in an earlier post, I purchased Saranac's 12 Beers of Summer pack which gives you 6 different beers to try. The next few blog posts will likely be about them as I had never had most of the beers in the pack before. This post is about their Rye IPA.

A Rye IPA is when the brewer replaces a portion of the grains with rye instead. The proportion is usually somewhere between twenty and thirty percent depending on the recipe but on various websites I've seen people say they put as much as forty to fifty percent of the grain to rye. They tend to have a spicier flavor to them from the rye and can be very startling the first time you try them if you aren't expecting it.

The beer poured a hazy, deep gold color with a bright white head. I didn't get much of a head but it did seem to stay with the beer as I drank it. There was very little lacing on the glass as I drank this beer. The nose was very spicy with quite a few hop notes to it. The flavor was pleasantly spicy with a welcome burn as you got to the hop notes. It was nicely balanced with a few malt notes toward the end. The finish was nice and clean with just a bit of a lingering burn.

A very nice beer though not something I would necessarily associate with summer considering the spice of it.