450 North Brewing Co. Scarecrow IPA (6.9% ABV)
Pour: 16 oz. can into a tulip glass
Appearance: Pours a slightly hazy golden peach color with a healthy amount of thick, persistent off-white head. Good edging, very nice lacing.
Aroma: A very clean nose for an IPA. Light fruit and flower aromas, something a bit soapy as well.
Taste: Understated – not much happening up front aside from maybe a touch of either caramel malt or resiny hops. A lemon/grass note in the middle that turns a bit flowery and bitter in the finish. Very bitter aftertaste.
Mouthfeel: Light body, very lightly carbonated. Heavy finish though – leaves a resiny film on the teeth and a pleasantly thick feeling on the tongue.
So this week we’re checking back in with Columbus IN’s 450 North Brewing Company to sample another one of their IPAs. Regular readers of this column might remember that back in April I wrote about one of the beers in their Dank Candy DIPA series, Gummy Haze. Looking back at my notes for that beer, the first thing it says under ‘taste’ is “Bitter and then some.” I haven’t tried enough of their beers at this point to know if that’s something all of their beers have in common, but Scarecrow is definitely another extremely bitter beer. In fact, the finish and aftertaste are both so bitter that they completely overwhelm the rest of the beer’s flavor profile.
But just like with the Gummy Haze, once your taste buds adjust to that bitterness, the beer really opens up and becomes quite tasty. According to their website, Scarecrow is brewed with Ahtanum, Cascade, Simcoe, Centennial, and Magnum hops. That combination yields a floral, earthy tasting beer with some subtle citrus notes—the slight lemon notes probably come from the Centennial hops—and a good amount of hop oils that account for the sticky finish. This is another very good beer from 450 North, and I will continue to pick up and sample more varieties as I see them at my local.
