Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

Jamey provided me a bottle of his Albemarle County Fair winning APA at the August monthly meeting.  I left on vacation the next morning forgetting to sneak it into the cooler.

So, I was able to drink it this evening. 

The head was monumentally large.  To the point where I wondered if I shook the bottle before opening.  It settled down after some time.

The clarity was a bit hazy, something I'd prefer to be more clear for an APA.  The color a golden orange tint.

I loved the taste and aroma.  A slight citrus aroma, but the taste was nice and hoppy without an over-whelming bitterness.  Very well rounded.

I really needed a 6-pack of this on the beach last week!

Jamey also nicely gave me a bottle of his American Pale Ale, so I figured I would post my thoughts here.  The beer pours very nicely, producing a liquid that is pale amber color, very similar to the Sam Adams Lager color.  It produces a nice pillowy white head that has lots of tiny bubbles.  I happened to have a pilsner glass handy to pour the beer in and it nicely displayed the carbonation and coloring on the beer.  As an aside, I am amazed at the large variety of colors you can find in APA.  The one I have made is much darker than Jamey's APA, but I have also seen them almost pilsner colored.

The beer has a light caramel smell, that has a bit of toffee mixed in.  I smell little hop aroma, but that might be because of the pilsner glass.  APA is a very wide style, but I would hope for a bit more hop aroma.  For flavor, the beer is very well balanced, and finished clean on the palate.  There is a hint of residual sweetness on the back of the tongue, but the nice carbonation and light hop presence quickly scrub it away.  The hops balance very well with the beer, I would guess in the mid to low 30s for IBUs, which goes very well with this beer.  I do taste a very slight hint of cooked corn in there, perhaps due to slightly stressed yeast.  If other bottles have a similar flavor, it might be systematic of the batch, but if no one else tastes it, then it was probably just this bottle.  It is very slight, and hardly impacts the flavor at all.

An excellent, very drinkable APA, Jamey.  Thanks for sharing!