Grand Teton’s Pursuit of Hoppiness and 2011 Teaser

Well hello again, it’s The Boy here doing a very special review of Grand Teton Brewing Company’s GrandTetonBrewing.com Pursuit of Hoppiness Imperial Red Ale.   You can see our gazillion other reviews of Grand Teton as we love them so here:  GrandTetonRules.  One of the beer pics I show a little shoulder (beer porn) so well worth it.

The reason The Girl and I chose Grand Teton today is because just the other day we received a very special delivery from Grand Teton.  I suppose it’s the perks of being World Famous Beer Bloggers (in our own minds).  We nabbed a sample bottle of their yet to be released Cellar Reserve Series 2011 Persephone Imperial Pilsner.   These beers are meant to be aged and what is so cool about the Cellar Reserve series is that there is a Cellar Master that provides aging updates and tasting notes for their Cellar Reserve beers so you can have some help judging when might be the best time to try the beer.  Click here to check out the Cellar Master notes:  Cellar Notes This beer will get it’s own review  within the week along with release info.

With Grand Teton Brewing fresh on our minds we looked through our enormous beer stash and pulled out the Pursuit of Hoppiness to review:  From the website:

“Pursuit of Hoppiness Imperial Red Ale is brewed to showcase the brash beauty of American hops: Summit, Simcoe, Chinook and Nuggets at 100 International Bitterness Units (IBU). The hops grown in the United States are considered to be some of the best in the world. Compared to their more traditionally subdued, elegant European counterparts, American hops are bold, bright, piney and zesty. This ale is brewed with Idaho 2-Row malted barley and German specialty malts to provide a rich, slightly caramel flavor and bold reddish color. At 22 degrees Plato starting gravity and about 8.5% alcohol by volume, this thick and warming beer is to be shared and savored. “

I am blown away to think there are 100 IBU’s in this beer.  Very little bitterness, lots of pine and citrus, lovely spice, so very refreshing.  The hops are the star of the show.  And it being an Imperial Red rather than IPA brought a bit of a sweet tart to the initial taste which I enjoyed.  It’s bottle conditioned of course so will age nicely if properly stored, but due to the degradation of hops it’s recommended you drink it fresh.  I love yeast in my beer, brings and earthiness and lots of B vitamins.

The website is amazing and doesn’t just describe their beers accurately and with lots of detail, there is also a lot of great beer history and education which makes their site a must to check out even if you can’t get their beers.

Oh snap!  Almost forgot!  Grand Teton’s Pursuit of Hoppiness placed in the top 25 beers of 2010 in Draft Magazine.  That’s practically a craft beer Oscar.  Well, for sure better than a Tony.