Ithaca Beer Surprises

On one of my frequent trips to Wegman’s I was perusing a beer section when something out of the ordinary caught my eye. There in the middle of all the six packs and single bottles was what looked to be a few wine bottles. I know that there is new legislation to get wine sold in grocery stores, but as far as I knew that bill hasn’t passed, so I went in for a closer look. Upon closer inspection, I came upon Ithaca Beer Company’s Excelsior White Gold:

Now this beer was attractively packaged and really caught my eye and got me interested. Then I read the label and was even more intrigued.

 

I liked that Ithaca Beer was being creative and using a range of different ingredients to produce small batches of quality beer. I also really liked that each bottle was labeled with the batch number, and they were allowed to bottled condition. When you bottled condition beer, you allow the beer to come to take on a life of its own. The yeast continue to produce flavors and the flavors that are already there change and evolve over time. It also means that every bottle is different, even though they were bottled from the same batch. That makes each beer its own little treasure, to be prized and hoarded.

I know, I know all of this and I haven’t even tasted the beer yet. Well here we go: I popped the top and I immediately knew I was in for some enjoyment. The beer started foaming over, like it was champagne. I quickly grabbed a glass and gently starting pouring it over and the results were:

  FOAMY!!!!

It finally settled down and I was able to pour the rest and this is what I got.

  It was a nice amber color, almost exactly the color of the amber jewelry you see at the summer arts festivals, and the clarity was very hazy. As the bottle said these beers are unfiltered and bottle conditioned, so I was expecting this haze.

AROMA: Very yeasty, you could smell the yeast themselves. If you have ever taken a brewery/winery tour and they take you back to the fermentation cellar, that’s exactly the smell. After the initial blast of yeast, there are some softer, fruitier notes that smell like slightly sour/tangy citrus. Probably oranges as Belgian Styles go well when paired with orange.

TASTE: Tons of CO2, which impart some bitterness but not enough to be objectionable. There is a soft mouth feel with some “slickness” that coats your tongue. It is very true to style for a Belgian White, notes of light wheat and orange and as I got closer to the bottom of the glass I actually had a few bits of orange in the beer, well at least I hope they were orange bits, but that’s what they tasted like to me. There were some other earthy notes, like fresh leaves, like fall but they were very very slight.

OVERALL: This was a very good beer. It is also a sipping beer at 8% alcohol, you can really enjoy each sip and taste all the flavors that are there. If you like Belgian White beers this is definitely worth buying and I would buy a couple of bottles. Drink one and cellar the others and try them at a later date. I think I might go out and buy a few and do that myself. I have always liked Ithaca Beer, but to me they were always like a good craft brewery on the edge of really breaking through into a great craft brewery. With this Excelsior line they have really broken through and put themselves on level with Stone Brewing and Dogfish Head in my opinion. Hands down just a great beer.