Odell Mountain Standard IPA

Mountain Style IPA? I tried to look it up and apparently it's something Odell, a Colorado brewery, made up. Anyway, Mountain Standard IPA pours a hazy lemonade-y hue, with a fluffy, two-finger bright white head. According to their website, their goal was to produce favor notes without adding an adjuncts or fruit. They say they achieve this by "triple hopping", which is when you add different types of hops during different stages of the brewing process. At 39 IBUs, it's not especially bitter, but there is evidence of different hop varieties, piney, grapefruit-y; tropical fruits; citrus, caramel and some breadiness. A little bit or orange peel and lemon zest too. Well balanced. An easy 9 on the IGB IPA scale. 
 

Odell Sippin' Pretty Fruited Sour

When I used to frequent Yia-Yia's a few years ago I would receive a warning whenever I ordered a sour beer: "That's a sour, you know!" I always knew.

Whenever I'm asked what my favorite beer styles are I can never narrow it down. Some styles I favor in the Winter months - winter warmers, stouts and porters, quads and bourbon barrel-aged ales of all descriptions; in the Spring I pick up some bocks and IPAs; in the Autumn I start looking for Oktoberfests and pumpkin ales; Summer is for Kölsches, Altbiers, shandies and sours. 

There are various styles of sours, some mildly tangy while others are super sour. The traditional method of brewing sour beers involved months-long processes, including the use of "wild" yeast; kettle brewing is a speeded up method, ostensibly to meet the demand, presumably without the use of wild yeast. Sippin' Pretty is a kettle brewed sour with açaí, guava and elderberry added for extra flavor. It pours a grapefruit pink with a pale pink head. All of the advertised flavors are there. Two of them anyway - I really don't know what elderberry tastes like! The tartness level is around a 4 on a scale of 10. Not much else to say, other than they claim to include Himalayan sea salt (although I don't believe that the Himalayas are near he sea), but I really can't detect any saltiness. (Note - the Gose style of sours contains sea salt). All in all, a refreshing brew, but there are better sours out there,