Greenwood Vermont-Style IPA

The Bitter Wife works every second Saturday afternoon. This creates a perfect recurring opportunity to duck out for a pint or to check out a brewery. One of my preferred Saturday afternoon haunts is Toronto’s Bar Hop (the original King Street location). They’ve always got something new and fresh that I’ve never tried before. On this Saturday in early October, that niche was filled by Greenwood Vermont-Style IPA. Built by the excellent Left Field Brewery in Toronto’s Greenwood neighbourhood, this little brew arrived looking milky gold, under a modest off-white foam.

The 6.3% 65 IBU ale had an extremely juicy tropical fruit aroma and a flavour to match. Notes of piña and mango were well represented, nestled in an assertively bitter body.

Bitter yet juicy are the hallmarks of the Vermont style, and Greenwood certainly hit both of those pretty squarely. I like my IPAs to have a bit higher percentage—if this stuff was in the 7% range, it’d have been closer to my ideal. I’d also liked the fruit flavours to be tangier, rather than the sweetness that settled in particularly as the beer warmed. All of that aside, though, Greenwood was a delicious beer from one of Toronto’s best.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.