So just the other day I posted about how I choose a new beer to try. Item number two on that list was: “A new beer from an old friend.”
Flying Fish, from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, has long been one of my favorite breweries. Not only was it local, but I long held their ESB Ale as my favorite. I also really like their OktoberFish™ (no longer available in bottles), Farmhouse Summer Ale, and Extra Pale Ale. So not only was I delighted to see several of their styles on the shelf of my favorite retailer, but also that they had a new style of theirs that I hadn’t tried: HopFish™ India Pale Ale.
In their words:
At the request of you hopheads, we produced this I.P.A. with a deep golden color, plenty of hop bitterness balanced by malt sweetness. Because of the extensive dry hopping, there’s a floral and citrus hop finish. It’s then lightly filtered to maintain the appropriate body and flavor. The beer features a combination of American, English and German malts to balance the large amount of hops. The HopFish also uses three hop varieties at five different times and has been dry-hopped for two weeks with 22lbs of Nugget whole leaf hops.
It pours with a nice golden color with a bit of a coppery hue. The head has nice tight bubbles and looks like it could be used in a commercial. A floral hop aroma is quite evident and it has a nice mouthfeel. It’s obviously been dry-hopped but the hops are really needed to offset the malt sweetness. The finish is floral with a bit of citrus sharpness.
I kind of like it, but I think I need to have a few more to be sure.
