Peak Organic Brewing Company isn’t a New York brewery –– it calls Portland, Maine, home. But their beers are so consistently good that I forgive them. Now they’ve gone and made a beer with New York ingredients, which, for various reasons, is more than I can say for many of the excellent brews reviewed on this site. Peak has embarked on a Local Series, with each brew in the series featuring hops and barley from a certain state (Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York) to showcase that state’s particular terroir.
Their New York example is here, and it’s a very cool example of the “sense of place” that increasingly valued in the beer world.
Since hops are such an expressive and variable ingredient, it makes sense that this series would feature four riffs on an “assertively hopped ale” made with “generous dry hopping”; New York hops, in particular, are enjoying a resurgence in the beer community, and this ale contains Nugget hops from Penn Yan as well as barley from the same location.
Pouring a two-finger frothy head on an amber-gold hue, with faint lacing, it offers a sweet and pine-y nose and a bready, orange, champagne-like malt bill. The finish is, of course, a hop salad but not without a neat dry crisp-bread note. It’s quite enjoyable and a great beer for an instructional tasting, as the individual components are easily discernible. I look forward to trying more brews made with New York ingredients –– especially as the number of hopsyards increases!
Producer: Peak Organic Brewing Company
Style: Pale Ale
ABV: 6.8%
Stemware: Littala-style tall goblet (not real; I’m a writer, not a surgeon)
Price: $7.99/22 oz. bottle